I went to a new doctor on Wednesday and she seems very good. She was recommended by a friend that has lupus. This friend doesn't give praise lightly and says this doctor ROCKS. So we'll see, but I have a positive feeling about her. She has a lot of passion about joint issues/auto-immune issues, so I’m really positive she’ll get to the bottom of it.
Basically I just did a chest x-ray which turned out great. – nothing wrong. I also did a massive amount of blood draws to test for 12-14 different things. The blood draw itself sucked like usual. Stupid body and veins not wanting to give it up. It was better than the last couple of times (1-3 hour ordeals). This one only took 3 different needle pokes in three places, 30 minutes total and two nurses. LOL - one of them had to do breathing exercises with me because I was on the verge of passing out.
I hate that I have no control over that reaction. I'm a tough broad, I have an extremely high pain threshold and needles don't bother me. But you try and take blood out of me though and my body acts like a wilting flower. Anyway, all this blood is going for a good cause. She's testing for Hepatitis C and Lyme disease to rule them out. They're extremely unlikely (but highly treatable). From the symptoms she said it doesn’t sound like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, although fibromyalgia is still out there. I will hear back from her about the blood tests on Monday and go from there.
I'm confused at this point - it went from being totally unbearable to getting better. Some of the symptoms are fading, although yesterday was a bitch. I spent most of the day after the doc appointment just trying to not throw up or fall asleep. Went home early and slept from basically 4 pm to 6:30 am the next day, with a couple of nausea filled hours icing my joints in between. It sucked.
Today's been better than it has been in a long time. I'm not in extreme joint pain. Nausea has been reduced too. They're there, but subdued. Like they're sleeping and could wake at any time. But they're not being evil to me, so I'm not poking them. Strange, but hell - I'll take what I can get at this point.
Not much else has been going on. Had some good steaks and great wine with Susan and Paul a couple of days ago and thanks to Susan now really like cooked arugula with bacon (yummy!) and she turned me on to a an Awesome Song. Another one. Paul's mom's coming down in a week or so and I'm totally stoked for that. It'll be really fun to hang out with her and take some time off of work. Hopefully if I still feel good tomorrow I'm going to try to go on a short ride - how I miss my Juliet, my sweet ride :)
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
more stuff
Last couple of weeks haven't been great - lots of joint pain, nausea, extreme fatigue, blah blah blah. Went to the doctor last Thursday and went over some blood tests. ANA test turned out positive, which means I have an auto-immune deficiency. I won't hear from the doctor for a week because she needs to talk it over with another doctor who's on vacation. Sometime after next Thursday I'll go see a specialist. I'm switching doctor's. A friend of mine who has lupus recommended her doctor - says she's a bulldog and amazing. This friend doesn't give praise lightly, so I'm going to check her out.
Since the test isn't really conclusive, just generally informative - there's a few things it could be - rheumatoid arthritis, (which, with my symptoms seems unlikely), fibromyalgia , lupus, or something else. All of which are difficult to diagnose, they have no clear idea about what causes any of them, and there's no real cure. Treatments are available to mitigate the symptoms when flare ups occur, but no real fix.
I'll be fine. Last couple of days have been better symptom wise. It's better knowing I should take it easy and not push it. Pushing myself - physically or mentally or emotionally - makes it much worse. In reality nothing's really figured out and I won't really know a diagnosis for at the MINIMUM a month, more like two. But thought I should let people know why I've been unavailable, not really communicative, not wanting to go out, etc... So this is a broadcast letting you know I'm still alive, just under the weather.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Parallel Planes
Most days now I think of blogging, but I'm not sure what to write. Life's for me is kind of going in a parallel mode. Some things are bleak/dreary/exhausting/unhappy and some things are really wonderful and happy.
My thyroid's gotten to the barely-there end of function, which means my energy level is fine - unless I forget to take my meds in the morning like today, and then I'm dragging. I really need to carry extra in all my various bags. But I've been able to do a lot lately - 65/70 mile ride on Sunday, 6 mile walk on Wednesday, I'm not bottoming out energy wise coming in to work - it's getting better and I'm really thankful for that.
Work's most of the problem for me right now. It's has been continuing with the theme of stressful and too much and a little scary. Every time I go into long term staffing and see 17+ people with no work and another 20 or so with no work in a couple of month's time I get nervous. We're continuing to cut costs at work, and we've supposed to have seen the worst of the recession, but reality lags behinds. I'm more concerned with my own little work world, though. There's too much that needs done and not enough time to do it in. I get off of work and it takes me an hour or so to revert into a normal mode and leave the stress behind. I don't like that.
Dee, my mom's wife, had a triple bypass surgery yesterday and is doing well, but that was very scary. It's going to be hard on Mom and Dee while Dee recovers, which should take a while. And it's odd, thinking how your parents are getting older, how I'm getting older, thinking about what it might be like if one of them wasn't there. And knowing it's going to happen at some point in the future. Mortality is inescapable.
And now that I've been a major downer, the other happier parallel plane is that positive things are happening socially. To be able to get me through the work icky I've been going out a lot recently, doing things, meeting people, having fun. Shanna's becoming a good friend and I'm going hiking with our neighbor Scott and his adorable Boston Terrier called Aldwin (which means old fiend in English) on Saturday. I got to hang out with Susan (Paul's ex) last night which was really wonderful and fun. We all went to the SAM together. I saw a couple of things I really really like. Unfortunately, I don't have real stamina in museums, my attention span is too short and/or I get a little overloaded. So Susan and I split off and hung out, went window shopping, and met up with Shanna and Paul at a neighborhood dive bar and hung out.
The super nice thing is that the hotter weather seemed to break last night and we had some wonderful super windy cool weather. Yay for change!
My thyroid's gotten to the barely-there end of function, which means my energy level is fine - unless I forget to take my meds in the morning like today, and then I'm dragging. I really need to carry extra in all my various bags. But I've been able to do a lot lately - 65/70 mile ride on Sunday, 6 mile walk on Wednesday, I'm not bottoming out energy wise coming in to work - it's getting better and I'm really thankful for that.
Work's most of the problem for me right now. It's has been continuing with the theme of stressful and too much and a little scary. Every time I go into long term staffing and see 17+ people with no work and another 20 or so with no work in a couple of month's time I get nervous. We're continuing to cut costs at work, and we've supposed to have seen the worst of the recession, but reality lags behinds. I'm more concerned with my own little work world, though. There's too much that needs done and not enough time to do it in. I get off of work and it takes me an hour or so to revert into a normal mode and leave the stress behind. I don't like that.
Dee, my mom's wife, had a triple bypass surgery yesterday and is doing well, but that was very scary. It's going to be hard on Mom and Dee while Dee recovers, which should take a while. And it's odd, thinking how your parents are getting older, how I'm getting older, thinking about what it might be like if one of them wasn't there. And knowing it's going to happen at some point in the future. Mortality is inescapable.
And now that I've been a major downer, the other happier parallel plane is that positive things are happening socially. To be able to get me through the work icky I've been going out a lot recently, doing things, meeting people, having fun. Shanna's becoming a good friend and I'm going hiking with our neighbor Scott and his adorable Boston Terrier called Aldwin (which means old fiend in English) on Saturday. I got to hang out with Susan (Paul's ex) last night which was really wonderful and fun. We all went to the SAM together. I saw a couple of things I really really like. Unfortunately, I don't have real stamina in museums, my attention span is too short and/or I get a little overloaded. So Susan and I split off and hung out, went window shopping, and met up with Shanna and Paul at a neighborhood dive bar and hung out.
The super nice thing is that the hotter weather seemed to break last night and we had some wonderful super windy cool weather. Yay for change!
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