I went through similar if not almost identical symptoms as you & was I was 1st diagnosed with a Meiners Disease but when my ENT retired the head of the whole ENT dept. ran a bunch of tests on me & sent me straight to the best neurologist in our city. After 3 horrible bouts of this weird illness I ended up paying for my own blood work & a very high reading for both R.A & C Reactive Protein popped up & I also found out I have a variant of the MTHFT gene which can cause nerve system problems because my vitamin b's do not cross the blood brain barrier correctly. I have small nerve neuropathy, hence the tingling hands, feet & all up to the neck. Just recently I have learned the reason for the strange feeling of complete fullness in my ears (like cement was poured in them & ringing out of my mind) was & is because of swelling up both sides of my neck to my ears. This was & is due to infection in the lymph nodes in the sternocleidomastoid area. I am being tested for so many "out of the box" things now because after 38 years of trying to figure this out it seems, including the RA symptoms that I have either have a deep anaerobic infection deep in my lower intestines & I do have to much heavy metals in my bones. I know this all sounds really bizarre but true. I have been to many, many specialists & all are & have been scratching their heads trying to figure out what is still wrong but I am now working with a functional medicine doctor. If you can find a good functional med dr. & you can afford to pay them as they usually do not take insurance you can get to the bottom & get some real relief. I have only done metal chelation so far but is has actually taken some of my extreme long bone pain away & brought my RA numbers down. I have been to 3 very good rheumatologists & they too also did not believe I truly had RA & all the meds I tried did nothing to me except make me sicker. Finally, there are medical reports coming out proving that infection of some sort is the cause & this is what I have been telling all my doctors since it started so long ago. If you can remember if you had a flu bug or cold, etc. when you 1st became ill with autoimmune that would be helpful to your doctors. I did have a huge infection due to having a c-section a year before the autoimmune issues took over my body & my whole life. Please please look into infection, microbes, all types of yeast or fungus, etc. & you will possibly figure this out & kill the beast off. I swear, when I read what you have gone through, I saw & felt all my weird issues including the heart thing. I am in Colorado & if you ever want to know more I would love to help you. I am not sure how this site works but filling you in with more very important stuff could really help you. I do not know if I am allowed to give you my phone#? I really do not want to see anyone else go through what I have for so many years. I could give you my email if you want to write me also but again I am not sure what this site allows. I hope we can get to a phone conversation so I can help guide you a bit. Oh, I am Lori Banta & I can not bare the fact that you are going through this horrible situation. By the way, it can go away & come back too.