March 18 – “Not a good day”

Today was beautiful.  Cool and sunny.  Perfect day to be outside.  But I had an appointment with my rheumatologist up in Houston.  I've been off the steroids for awhile now, and this is the checkup to see how things are going since then.  The answer in a word is not so good.  OK.  That's three words.  My fingers and toes have been aching and sore.  My left elbow is in a class all its own.  My knees snap, crackle and pop, and usually throb after just a little bit of walking.  And the newest guests at the party are my hips.  I even have a new nerve pain spot – the tops of my feet feel like they are sunburned – but that's another day, another doctor.    This guy is really a lot of fun.  He is a teacher, so he always has students doing rotations.  Today was a resident just starting a month there.  The guy took a complete history again.  He tried to be assured but it came off as if he was trying to be arrogant and wasn't doing a good job.  He seemed pretty sharp, though.  And the doc really put him through the wringer with question after question.  He finally made him come up with a "hypothesis" and what he would do about it.  Then he totally disagreed with him.  It was fun to watch them spar back and forth while talking about me in the third person and I was right there.  Anyway, the conclusion for today was that because of how I responded to the steroids, what I have has to be a smoldering rheumatoid arthritis.  They took some more blood, but last time nothing showed up.  He said 40% of people with RA don't show anything in one particular test, and 20% of people don't show anything at all.  He's pretty sure that's me.  So he prescribed one of the specific RA medicines.  It's kind of scary.  I take one a day for a week, then two a day for a week, then three a day for a week and finally four a day for a week.  He said I had to work up to the dose slowly.  And they had to watch my liver function and be careful to not get infections.  And I had to take some kind of vaccination against 15 or 20 kinds of pneumonia.  Scary.   We stopped at Olive Garden on the way home.  It was already 2:30 after an 11:30 appointment, by far the longest time ever there.  I tried something different, seafood something or other.  It had five shrimp and five scallops mixed in with a boatload of noodles and white juicy stuff on it.  I know.  I should be a waiter there, right?   We had to go to Sam's for some kitchen supplies for dinner on the grounds at church this Sunday.  The church credit card was denied.  I talked to everybody there, and they even called the billing office.  I finally just paid cash and I'll get the financial secretary and treasurer to work it out.   Now here's the PG part for today.  We watched an episode of House the other day that we had taped.  It was about a blogger with some kind of mystery disease who sits in bed and posts blogs constantly.  She talks to her blog audience about everything.  Well, everything that is, except – as House discovers - everything but bowel movements.  And therein was the clue he needed to treat her mysterious malady.   As we were leaving Sam's I had an attack of my own personal bowel malady, one the doctors finally called a spastic colon.  I can sometimes go for several days without a bowel movement.  Then I begin to have severe stomach cramps.  They continue until that spastic colon decides to open up the gates, as it were.  It is an exhausting experience that lasts for hours.  It hasn't happened lately, but it is supposedly aggravated by stress, so I guess today qualified.  After it finally eased up a bit, I fell asleep for a couple of hours.  When I woke up it was 10:30.  And the world had continued to spin while I was gone.  Amazing how that works.   Psalms 118:24 says, "This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."   Father, thank you for today, too.  Amen.