Inching Forward

Hey, everybody.  I haven't posted for a while.  I'm mostly hanging around on twitter these days.  140 characters fits my lifestyle better than a whole blog.  Generally speaking, not much happens to talk about.

There have been some changes recently, though.  Last week I saw the new GI after having a colonoscopy in early July.  (Nothing dire, they just like to take a peek at the insides every once in a while to make sure there aren't any nasty surprises.)  He reviewed all my files, and we discussed, and bottom line is that I'll be starting Humira as soon as we can get it approved by insurance.  I've known this was coming for a while.  I'm hopeful that the new med will mean an improvement in my health and quality of life.  But I'm kind of dreading it, too.  The last big med I was on was Remicade.  It's an IV drug, which was no big deal.  (I got over my discomfort with IVs after spending 2 weeks in the hospital five years ago.)  Someone else does all the work.  All the patient has to do is sit there and wait for it to finish dripping.  Humira is a self-injection.  I'm going to have to get over my squeamishness and learn to stick myself.  It'll be an injector pen, like an epi-pen, so nowhere near as bad as it could be.  But I'm kind of underwhelmed by the idea anyway.

The other new thing is a bit more positive.  I went to the Y today and signed up for a membership.  I'm *finally* going to start going to water arthritis classes again.  The next class is Wednesday afternoon, so barring surprise!period (which wouldn't totally shock me-- my cycle has been running at about 25 days lately, but I'm hoping it will at least wait until the weekend), I hope to be back in the pool then.

Also, Troub hasn't been doing so well lately.  He's not eating much, and when he does eat he pukes it back up about half the time.  The vet thinks his allergy to his food has finally gotten to be too much.  We switched to a different food, which helped for a while, but now he doesn't want to eat either brand.  And he hasn't been getting his steroid, because the only way we could get it in him was to squirt it on his food.  No eating, no steroid.  Without the steroid it's become obvious that he has arthritis problems.  I talked to the vet again this morning, and she wants me to significantly up his steroid dosage.  Somehow.  My brother is coming over shortly to see if he can get it in him.  He likes my brother.  He (the cat, not my brother) has been hiding, first in my parents' closet and then under my bed, since he spotted me with the syringe this morning.  The really frustrating part is that he used to *love* his medicine.  And then all the sudden he decided he didn't like it any more.  (I get it from a special veterinary compounding pharmacy, and it's tuna flavored.  We're going to refill in chicken flavor and see if he likes that any better.)

So that's all the scary, positive, frustrating news around here.  At this rate, I'll have more news in another couple months.  In the meantime, look for me on twitter.  I'll be the one making smartass comments and retweeting stuff.

Big Day

It's been a long day, and let me tell you-- I am TIRED.

First, I went to the doctor.  She's going to give me one more round of antibiotics, this time a different one, to see if whatever is going on in my left boob clears up.  If not, she's sending me to a specialized breast surgeon.  She seems to be leaning away from infection and more toward inflammatory something or other going on in there.  With the Crohn's and the inflammatory joint stuff, I wouldn't be surprised if I've developed some weird, auto-immune breast issue.  I asked if that was a possibility, and she didn't deny it.  But she wasn't aware of any auto-immune diseases that affect the breast.  (Neither am I, but since there are about a million auto-immune diseases out there, it's not surprising that there's one I'm unfamiliar with.)  The impression I got from her was that she's concerned, if this antibiotic doesn't work, that it might be inflammatory breast cancer.  That's pretty aggressive, and not something you want to get.  I asked if it was possible for the mammogram to come out clear and still have inflammatory breast cancer.  She said it is, if it's just inflammatory, and there's no lump.  So kind of waiting it out.  If RT weren't next week, I'd probably go ahead and go to the surgeon to get it checked out instead of trying this third round of antibiotics.  But at least with RT coming up, I've got something to focus on other than ol' lefty.

In more positive news, I drove today for the first time in over a year.  There was no real reason why I haven't driven in the last year.  I just don't go anywhere much, and 90% of the time when I leave the house it's to go somewhere with my parents anyway.  So I just don't drive.  Plus, I don't own a car, so driving means taking Mom or Dad's car.  It was really uncomfortable there for a while, although I was perfectly comfortable behind the wheel today.  So yay!

After the doctor's office I went to Walmart to fill my prescription and get some last minute stuff for RT.  I really wore myself out, but I had a good time!  Check out this fabulous bag I got!  (The Cherries among us will appreciate it.)  And it was super cheap-- 88 cents!  The next time this bag sees the light of day, it will be filled with goodies at RT.

And here is a picture of the little gadget cozy I knit this weekend to cover up my mp3 player/wifi/fake smart phone thingie.  I'd take a picture of it with the gadget in it, but my gadget is my camera, so....

The cozy won't protect it from any hard knocks, but hopefully it will keep the screen from getting all scratched up in my purse as it gets carted around next week.  And I'll try to remember to take lots of pictures, so you get to see all the wonderful readers and writers I meet.

I think that's all the big news for right now.  I have some other good stuff to talk about, and I'll try to get to that this week, before I leave for RT.

Lip Balm Flavor of the Day: Cat Pee

Grrr again

It's been less than a week since I finished my second round of antibiotics, and my boob is all red and swollen again. I had a massage yesterday, and after a while lying on my stomach was agony. I'm going to have to go back to the doctor this week. In amongst all the chores and errands I need to complete next week so I can go to RT the week after.

Damn it, boob. Not cool.

Update- Sorry Everybody!

Sorry, everyone!  Didn't mean to leave you hanging.  The mammogram went very well.  It didn't hurt at all.  So no excuses-- get the girls checked!

The report came back clear, with nothing to report.  I'm almost finished with my course of antibiotics, and I've got a call in to my doctor to get a refill.  I'm still a little pink, a little swollen, a little tender, but nothing like I was.  Hopefully, a few more days on the antibiotic and I'll be back to normal.

And on the positive side, I now have a baseline mammogram.  That could be helpful in the future, considering I have a family history of breast cancer.

Nervous Update

I had my appointment today with my doctor.  There's definitely something going on in there.  She thinks it might be a cyst or mastitis.  She sent me home with a prescription for antibiotics, and I have an appointment for Tuesday afternoon for a mammogram and an ultrasound if necessary.  Her office should get the results within 24 hours, so hopefully I'll have some answers Wednesday afternoon.  In the meantime, if it's an infection the antibiotic should have it on the mend.

Nervous

Just a heads up-- this is going to be weird and filled with Too Much Information.  Continue at your own risk.

I need to call the doctor tomorrow.  There is something strange going on with my left breast.  The nipple and areola are swollen and sore.  Every once in a while I'll move and feel a sharp, tearing pain.  Any pressure against the breast causes a slightly duller, aching pain.  There's no discoloration or discharge.  It's not warm to the touch the way you might expect from infection or inflammation.

So I did the dumbest thing a person can do-- I googled.  My first thought, a yeast infection, sounds unlikely.  If it were bacterial it sounds like I'd probably be having a systemic reaction, which I'm not.  The thing that's left is inflammatory breast cancer, one of the most sudden and aggressive forms of breast cancer.

That's right, folks.  I've diagnosed myself with breast cancer off the internet.  To be fair, I have a family history of breast cancer, and the medications I've been on for Crohn's give me an increased risk of all kinds of cancer.  And no, I don't really think I have breast cancer based on a few web pages.  But it is concerning.  Also, it really fucking hurts.  So I'm calling my doctor tomorrow and getting it checked out.

FGBVs, please.

Update: I have an appointment to see my doctor on Friday at 12:30.

In Flux

I don't know about you, but for me the week between Christmas and New Year's is always an odd one.  The old year is over, but the new one hasn't started yet.  It's a time for wrapping up old business and gearing up for the new.

For the old business, I'm mostly making sure that my book and knitting records are up-to-date, bills are paid, that kind of thing.  Reading the last of the holiday stories-- tonight's is Carol of the Bellskis, a m/m Hanukkah story.  And wrapping up a stray knitting project-- a hat made from the leftover yarn from my brother's Christmas socks that I intend to donate to a local homeless shelter.

For new business, I've started my first knitting project for myself.  It's this sack sock to collect all the random plastic bags that I keep finding all over my room.  (For someone who rarely leaves the house and shops almost exclusively online, I have a shocking number of plastic bags floating around the place.)  (Bonus, it will help me keep my room clean!)  I've picked up a couple of songs that inspire me for the beginning of a writing soundtrack.  I'm not working hard yet, but I'm poking in that direction.  And I've got my eye on a reading challenge over at Goodreads that should help me control the ebook buying issue.  I felt like crap today (monthly surge in symptoms, plus I'm just worn out from the past week or so), so no activity whatsoever, and no cleaning.  I think I might need the same for tomorrow.  But Wednesday, look out!  I'll poke around and do something or other.  My favorite Wii game encourages me to compete against myself, to always go just a little further, so once I get into it again that should help keep me motivated.

So, progress.

And with that, I will leave you with a picture.  I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I came back I discovered someone had stolen my spot.

It's a little hard to tell, because the bed is so cluttered.  But that green thing is the hat, almost finished then, and completed now.  There's also a cone of white/black/pink yarn that I'm using to make my sack sock.  I'm getting an interesting swirling stripe effect as it knits up.  I'll take a picture in a day or two, when I'm further along and it's easier to see what's going on.

'Night, all!

Occupy My Bed

It's been a tough couple of days.  My body has apparently decided that sleep is off the menu.  I haven't managed to fall asleep before 4am since Sunday night.  Morning.  Whatever.

Which really isn't so far out there for me.  I'm mostly up all night these days.  The problem has been that I had places to be on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  Tuesday I had a massage appointment, Wednesday my cousin and her 3 kids spent the day with us, and Thursday we drove down to my SIL's parents' house (an hour and a half away) for Thanksgiving.

I don't do well with changes in my routine.  I *really* don't do well with noise and commotion and crowds.  And I *especially* don't deal well with stacking those things together for several days in a row and then asking my body to do it on about 2 hours of sleep a night.  I feel like I was run over by a bus.  And then the bus backed up and ran over me again.  My whole body hurts, and my legs are so weak that I feel wobbly when I try to stagger to the bathroom or, god forbid, across the house to the kitchen.

So the only thing I will be Occupying is my bed.  It's not like I was planning to go out into the mayhem that is Black Friday, anyway.  At three o'clock in the afternoon I'm probably safe from being knocked over in a stampede and trampled to death or crushed into jelly against locked store doors by a deal-maddened crowd. But there are still all those people out there, with all those germs.  No, thank you.

I will lay in bed and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and read.  Maybe in a little bit I'll watch some TV.  That's about as Black as I can handle.

Grab a Boob Today

This totally cracks me up.  But it's also an important reminder.  So watch this video, and then grab a boob.  (Preferably one of your own.)  Practice a little self-love, ladies!

I know we spend a lot of time focusing on women and breast cancer in the month of October, but men really ought to be doing these self-exams, too.  If you've got nipples, you can get breast cancer.  So, men, give 'em a little fondle, too!