Shawn Lane - Playing guitar with psoriatic arthritis

Just a warning first - this will only interest guitarists!

There have been very few professional guitarists with psoriatic arthritis, or at least that have admitted it. In fact, I suspect that there aren't any working as freelance musicians. The demands of turning up every day ready to play something completely unprepared just don't work with a condition that leaves you not knowing how you will feel when you wake up the following morning. There has been one artist though that famously had it, and it doesn't exactly give a lot of hope.

Shawn Lane developed psoriatic arthritis at the age of 13. He still went on to become one of the most technically accomplished electric guitar players around. Fortunately for him as a guitarist, the illness seemed to mainly attack his legs; whilst he could play fantastically he had trouble walking around.

I'm not sure what treatment options were open to Shawn, and there's very little written about what medication he was on, but he certainly wouldn't have had the option of the newer biologic drugs. Methotrexate may have been an option to him but it's not  talked about and there's plenty of reasons why somebody can't take that. What we can be certain of is that he basically survived on steroids.

My experience of steroids is that they can completely clear your system of inflammation. They can pretty much make you fully functional. They're great - in the short term. Unfortunately they have some nasty side effects. After years of steroid treatment Shawn ended up incredibly fat. He also developed another condition that often goes along with inflammatory arthropathies - pulmonary fibrosis. Ultimately it was the pulmonary fibrosis and long term steroids that killed him. Ultimately though, I suspect the reason he was so dedicated to the guitar was his psoriasis at a young age.