Patient Advises Others to “Be Curious” After Potentially Fatal Autoimmune Diagnosis

This video is a Patient Story featuring Dr. Ron Hunninghake, MD, and Riordan Clinic Patient Denise Douty. To read the full Patient Story, visit riordanclinic....
Scleroderma started small for Denise Douty, 49, of Wichita. Her fingers felt funny after scraping her windshield on a frigid January morning in 2019. Not thinking much of it at first, she assumed it would go away. It didn’t.
Not long after, she began experiencing joint pain, which became increasingly debilitating. As the year progressed, so did her pain. Denise had a job teaching a graduate school class at a Wichita-area college that summer. She said the pain was getting so bad she began to doubt if she would be able to walk across campus. She also worked as a licensed counselor and could hardly show up for appointments because of the exhaustion and pain.
Having no primary care physician of her own, she saw her wife, Cindy’s, doctor, who referred her to a rheumatologist. During the four-month wait for her appointment her symptoms continued to worsen.
“By that time, I thought I was just dying,” Denise said. “I was feeling awful and could hardly work.”
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