Diagnostic dilemma

Comments

Okay, so, I’ve been having a lot more frustrating issues as of late:

  • Whatever my connective tissue issue is, it’s getting way worse
  • My kneecaps love to dislocate while I walk, and after 1.5 miles or so my knees start to give out under me
  • My toes also love to either dislocate or weirdly cramp at random, which is quite painful, and getting them back in place is challenging
  • My other joints (wrists, shoulders, TMJ, and sometimes elbows and ankles) are also in pain a lot of the time, and are possibly getting inflamed
  • I’ve been having frequent bouts of vertigo (which are especially troubling when I’m driving)
  • My tinnitus has gotten a lot worse recently
  • Also my GERD is back, and my usual dietary measures to keep it at bay aren’t working
  • I’m also getting occasional unexplained itchy rashes that flare up and subside after a few days
  • And I am fatigued all. the damn. time.

Yesterday I had a doctor appointment to try to figure stuff out, and while the appointment itself was pretty unproductive due to the usual crap with modern healthcare practices, the doctor did at least run a lot of labwork for me, including checking autoimmune and inflammation factors and the most common connective tissue disorder markers. It all came back negative.

She did at least refer me to a rheumatologist, but I suspect the rheumatologist is just going to look at the labwork and say there’s nothing they can do for me. Most likely the answer is going to be the usual “diet and exercise,” when my diet is already pretty decent and I have difficulty doing exercise because of the very problems I’m complaning about.

The only thing that was even slightly out of the ordinary on the bloodwork was a borderline c-reactive protein, which indicates either systemic inflammation or coronary artery disease, and given that I’m a bit overweight I can guess which of the two the doctors are going to assume it is (especially without any other markers indicating underlying causes for inflammatory disease).

There’s got to be something causing all this but the state of the medical industry means that it’s unlikely that anyone I talk to in the medical field is going to come up with ideas on their own, they’re just going to tell me “diet and exercise” and to do BPPV exercises. During the Epley maneuver the vertigo does get way worse, but completing the maneuver doesn’t resolve it.

And of course none of this even comes close to addressing my joints not moving the way they’re supposed to. I love walking but I sure don’t like the feeling of my knee bending backwards when I do so. Nowadays I need knee braces and a cane whenever I go out, if I want to have any chance of making it home without being in agony. And never mind playing DDR.

It’s just, gosh. I wish someone out there also has these problems but also knows what the cause is so that I can find some hope of understanding what I can do to make things better. There is so much more I’d rather be doing than what I’m currently capable of.

Today’s wins and frustrations

Comments

The work on my bathroom is nearly complete. The wall is patched, the tile is fixed (and it went surprisingly well with no additional damage from the broken tile’s removal), and all that’s left is replacing the baseboard and painting. I don’t even need to be without a shower while anything cures, as it turns out.

Then I had a massage appointment out in Tukwila (across the street from the hotel I was staying at during the original bathroom remodel from hell, coincidentally enough). I felt the start of a panic attack when I was close to the end of the drive, but made it there fine.

The massage therapist’s office was upstairs, in a building with no elevator, and his office was locked and the instructions said to wait out in the hallway if that’s the case. My knees were acting up much more than usual today, so of course I got to sit out in the hallway while I heard the massage therapist just chatting with his previous client for 20 minutes about fishing. And then when they finally decided to end the yammering and he saw that I was out there he said I should have just knocked on the door to be let in. Oy.

Read more…

The return of panic

Comments

Wellp, I had another big panic attack while driving today. Worst one I’ve had in around a year, and my usual grounding and mindfulness things didn’t help. I had a vertigo attack while entering the tunnel to the I-90 bridge, and this very quickly cascaded to a full-on panic shutdown.

I managed to make my way to Mercer Island and stopped at a Starbucks to collect myself, and then was able to get back across the bridge to make my way to Rainier Ave to drive home via surface streets, and had a good cry when I got home.

Read more…

On the plus side

Comments

I finally replaced my blood sugar meter and, after verifying the new one’s calibration, my blood sugar is back to normal-ish, which is to say, 110 mg/dL after waking up, which is still “prediabetic” but not even remotely “go to the hospital.”

I’m not sure if it’s the meter or my test strips which were bad, but either way doing a refresh on the whole kit was a good idea, especially since I only do occasional testing. The included sample strips and test fluid always last me way longer than the “discard after” time, and I also was never great about closing the test strip vial after taking one out (which I guess can affect the chemistry), and given how infrequently I need to test, it just makes more sense for me to buy a new test kit bundle when I need to.

I wonder what the useful lifetime on a blood glucose tester is supposed to be, anyway. They sure seem to be made to be disposable. (But also that’s probably a function of how they work to begin with. Reagents always degrade, as do chemical detectors.)

But at least we can take blood sugar off of my immediate list of concerns.