Fighting it

After two weeks of telling myself "it'll be gone by tomorrow", I give in.  It's official.  My auto-immune thingy is back.  Ugh.  Warning: this post contains medical details that some people may find icky, so if you're not sure just stop here.  

Since the last time I wrote about it, I've learned more that seems to relate to my condition.  Firstly, I found out that taking sulfa antibiotics can trigger lupus.  My doctor found anti-nucleic antibodies in my blood: one of the markers of lupus.  Also, lupus can exist in many forms, from life-threatening to very mild.  I suspect that I have a very mild form of lupus.  

(My doctor did not go so far as to make a diagnosis.  He just told me that I had the antibodies and left it to me to Google the implications.)

I had no such problems until I took a sulfa antibiotic when I was 21.  After a few days of taking the pills, I had a severe reaction in which I broke out in hives from my neck down to my toes, and ran a fever.  I remember my boyfriend at the time telling me I looked like an alien; holding his hand over my arm to feel the heat radiating from my swollen skin.  

My legs swelled up so much that all the capillaries popped and the skin turned blue with bruising.  That was really gross.

Anyway, I recuperated from the reaction, but after that I became prone to outbreaks of hives.  When I was under stress, or ate something too spicy, I'd have an attack.

It would start in my abdomen, a knot of heat and pain.  Then the knot would untie itself, releasing rays of heat.  I could feel the badness exploding out from that middle point to my joints and skin.  My knees, knuckles, and elbows turned bright red and swelled up.  The palms of my hands and the soles of my feet, also scarlet and swollen, burned and itched horribly.  After around ten minutes of this reaction, it would subside, leaving me weak, slightly feverish, and exhausted.  It happened at least once a month.

After I left my ex-husband, I stopped getting these reactions.  I joked that I had been allergic to him.  Truly, I had been harbouring a lot of anger and frustration in that relationship, and it came out in my body.  I take psycho-somatic illness to professional levels.

Anyway, I thought I was finally done with all that.  But then I was struck down with a nasty attack around four years ago.  Since then, I get a different set of symptoms, related to the ones I had in my 20's but not quite the same.  Instead of getting severe flare-ups that pass within hours, I go through phases that can last for days or weeks.

The past couple of years have been easy on me.  Sometimes I'll have a day or two where I can feel the symptoms creeping up on me, but if I ignore them and get enough sleep, they'll go away again. 

During the past two weeks I've been getting enough sleep, but I'm not getting off so easy.  The intensity has varied from "I can ignore this if I'm distracted" to "I really just want to crawl under a blanket and whimper".  Today isn't too bad, or I wouldn't have the focus and energy to write.  

When it's bad, my muscles and joints ache.  My knees, hands, and feet stiffen up.  I can tell how bad the day will be as soon as I put my weight on my feet in the morning.  If it feels like my foot bones are grinding against each other, it's not going to be fun.  I also get that grinding feeling in my head, like the bony plates of my skull are tectonic plates, shifting.

I get a heavy feeling in my chest, as though I have congestion, but there is none.  I'm guessing it's inflammation.  And all my soft insides get tender and achey.  It's kind of like the feeling of having the flu.  And I get tired.  Not too tired to stand up, but tired enough that I can't cope well with any extra stress.  Even if I've had 8 hours sleep the night before, by 8:30 pm I'm already feeling desperately exhausted.  

This thing generously grants me just enough energy to work all day and eat dinner, and then I'm down for the count.  I'll dither around until 9:30, because I can't stand the thought of going to bed so early, but I'm too grouchy to talk on the phone, too tired to read, and generally useless.  It really does nothing for my social life.

After two weeks of living like this, I'm running out of tolerance.  It's starting to seriously tick me off.  I'd better get better real soon-like, or else!  Or else...  I don't know.

Anyway, speaking of looking like an alien, these guys cheer me up. :-)