Polymyositis and Dermatomyositis

Your muscles are growing weak. Lifting your arms is difficult, rising from a chair, climbing stairs. What was once self-evident — reaching upward, straightening yourself, bearing your own weight — becomes an effort. The shoulders and pelvic girdle, the great force centres of the body, grow tired, inflamed, painful. With dermatomyositis the skin joins in: reddened, sensitive, irritated across the cheeks, the eyelids, the knuckles. The body burns outward while strength fades from within.