Journal 1/4/04

01/04/04

Time flies when things are going on don’t they? From the time I went back to work, I started to feel worse and worse. My arms and legs and knees and hands were swelling more frequently when I had pain. Not in one spot, but for example my entire forearm. I also came down with a sore throat and then the flu. I had to take sick time around Christmas and wasn’t able to do anything. Things were so painful and I was getting no sleep. The doctor gave me a prescription for percocet and a muscle relaxant to help me sleep at night. When I went to see Dr.Nepveu, the Rheumatologist, she said the swelling I had was in the tissue and not the joints. That my joints looked pretty good except for a couple. She recommended blood work to check my thyroid, kidney and other functions. The thyroid came back abnormal. In August my level had been in the normal range but close to abnormal. She thought that this might be causing the swelling. As of now, I have been about 2.5 weeks and upped the dose of thyroid medicine once. The swelling’s mostly gone now and I am mostly off from the pain killers. Last night I slept without any medication. It was ok, but not a great night‘s sleep. I am hoping that this has had something to do with causing what seemed to be RA. I am always hopeful of that. Dr. Rippa wanted me to restart the plaquenil (I stopped all except estrogen when the blood test was done and before results) . I don’t want to do that, especially if I’m planning on a diet that will boost my immune system and the medicine brings it down a notch. I have plans to make some dietary changes, but am finding this hard to do all at once. I’ve started taking vitamins, because my intuition tells me it’s important. Basically I felt horrible and in a lot of pain plus I had the flu with one of the worst sore throats I ever recall. Just in the last week am I feeling sort of human again. I was able to work M-W although I felt sore at the end of the day. We had Th and Friday off for New Year’s. This week coming up is a whole week. I am a little tentative about how I will do all week at work.

Christmas came and went rather uneventful, but a nice day. I could do no shopping or preparations, so a lot fell onto Rob this year. Mom did some shopping for me for Rob so I had some presents to give him. He got mostly clothes this year. I haven’t found anything to make this up to him. I don’t know if he feels cheated or not. Christmas eve we went to Rob’s parents’ house. Becky went to her mother’s that night. At dinner Christmas day, my Mom, Derik and Lauren, and Becky, and Rob and I were here. Rob made an awesome filet mignon. We didn’t open presents until later in the day. Amanda, Jason and Christen came by in the evening. Becky planned to return to her mother’s, but didn’t talk to us about it all. We found out that evening when she asked to be taken over there. Too bad we lost having that family time, but that seems to be par for the course. We are not the place of choice to be, which is typical. Becky even came without Rob’s present. That bothered me a lot. Anyway - over all it was a good day.

Today is Sunday and I do not feel like going back to work tomorrow. I don’t know what I want to do, but it isn’t to spend my feel good time at work and have sucky pains at night on my time at home. I have pretty much done nothing for the last 4 days but lay around or sit around and watch TV or movies. On Thursday I slept until noon and again on Friday. Saturday we spent most of the day around going to see the third Lord of the Rings movie. Today, just laying around watching TV again. Amanda brought her car over to be fixed. Too bad she didn’t bring Christian with her. I think I’m crabby today - maybe because I haven’t done anything today and I’m just restless. Or maybe I need to sleep instead of watching TV. Part of what’s bothering me is my stupid hearing problem. My left ear has been “plugged” since just before Christmas. The doctor said it could take a couple of weeks for it to come back after the flu. Now it’s ringing most of the time and high pitched noises echo. It’s very annoying and definitely impacts what I can hear. I have to pay attention to catch a lot of things. I think I’m done writing tonight.