Loooong post filled with cussing and aggravation
I'm eating much healthier. I'm trying not to eat breads and potatoes as much (which I love!). Made homemade mashed potatoes and cream gravy with pork chops and a salad tonight though. But I only ate 1 small pork chop and half the mashed pots I'd normally eat. The steroid I'm on increases my appetite and slows down my metabolism :( Plus it cause "moon face" So even though I've only gained 15lbs, it's all in my face and boobs. And no that's not a good thing. It could be worse, other people I've talked to gained 50-100lbs on the same steroid. I'm trying my best to stay positive. It's just so hard. My body hasn't changed so much (a little but not too bad - one size), but I don't even look like myself anymore in the face. I hate it!
On a possible good note, the doc just put me on an antibiotic and one of the side effects (prolly the only good one) is loss of appetite so maybe it'll balance out. Also I'm drinking tons of water, nothing else if possible. I still crave juice, but since I do the grocery shopping I control the fat, and calories (and ice cream and junk food), so if I don't buy it, we don't have it! And I won't buy it. But whenever I go to my parent's house I pig out. It's full of snacks. Chocolate and ice cream and chips and crackers and sodas and 15 different kinds of cereal. You can't begin to imagine! My dad grew up in a household with 6 brothers and 1 sister. If you didn't make it to the dinner table on time, you didn't eat. They didn't know what snacks were. So when my dad got kids of his own his idea of spoiling us was junk food. Good thing we are all athletes or we'd be HUGE! (like I'm getting now!) I'm trying to avoid going over to their house but our family is so close knit, it's hard.
The other bad thing is the steroid is killing my joints. It breaks down cartilage and can cause hip degeneration, loss of calcium, and from prolong usage osteoporosis, so I'm taking lots of supplements but my knees are killing me. It hurts to walk, stand and even sit for too long. Even my shoulders and elbows are starting to ache now. My eye doc is sending me to a rheumatologist. My appointment isn't until March though. It's so hard to get in there.
There are 2 other "super" eye specialists in San Antonio that do what my doc does. So since he can't figure out what's wrong with me and nothing is making it better we may all get together for the "Grand Rounds" and have a big pow wow and see what they can come up with. My doc says it will prolly be free too. Which is great because the insurance co is still fighting me on this. They are trying to see if it's a "pre-existing condition" because it all happened so close to when I got married. I didn't get married to get the fucking insurance! I happened to get insurance because we got married after 5 1/2 years! Argh!
I keep sending the insur co the same paperwork over and over again (since October) and they keep fucking shit up. I've given them permission to get my medical records from the 6 months before we were married. They keep saying "Oh we asked those docs, they aren't responding, so we're not going to pay or even do a review of your case until we get the proper responses. Of course in the mean time all the docs I've seen since then want to get paid and are threatening me. And of course the docs I saw before this (and even the new ones-which for some reason they want those records to, how could it be pre-existing if those are the docs I saw after I was on the insurance?), I've talked on the phone with and actually went to the offices and none of them have received any letters of release or faxes (which the insurance co claims they sent at least twice) from the insur co. The doc's offices have no reason to lie. They want to help me, they want to get paid! I even sat there at one office and watched them fax over my medical records, of course the lady couldn't find the fax right away. I was on the phone with her the whole time. It's so fucking frustrating! If they don't want to pay, just fucking say so and get the fuck out of my life. I don't need this extra hassle. The other problem is every time I call I end up talking to a different person so of course they have no clue except what they see on a computer screen and if the other people I faxed shit to didn't or have yet to enter the info, it isn't there. Of course that doesn't mean I haven't done my part (over and over and over again). But does that stop them from sending me threatening letters in the mail? Of course not!
Like I said my doc has me on a steroid called Prednisone. It is bad in high doses and for extended periods of time. Well back in Dec I was on 60mg for a week. Nothing. Then he upped it to 100mg which made my legs swell up like a sausage and it killed my knees. But then my eye started to look better on the inside. The doc said there were less cells and the redness on the outside wasn't as bad and my vision was getting a bit better. So since it was so bad to be on such a high dose of the steroid he weaned me down by 20 mg each week. Well when I got to 60 he wanted me to go to 50 for 2 weeks and then 40 for 2 weeks. After one week of being at 50 my vision got really bad and the out side of my eye turned very red but in a concentrated area. Before it wasn't as red but more spread out. Also there is a protrusion on the outer side of my eyeball. It's icky! So I decided myself to go back up to 60mg. Now he upped me back to 80. I hope this works.
I told him we needed to do something drastic. All this up and down crap isn't working and it's just prolonging it. I told him I'd rather be on a high dose of the steroid since it seem to be working at 100mg and be in a lot of pain but for only a short period of time (maybe 2 months)than be on a lower dose for a looooong period of time (5-8 months) and still be in almost as much pain. Trust me, when your joints hurt, a little or a lot doesn't make any difference!
The problem is all my tests have come back negative. Everything! You wouldn't believe what I've been tested for. Everything from tetanus, to syphilis, to lyme disease, to lupus, to herpes, to bronchitis, to AIDS. I've had x-rays on my lungs, shitloads of blood work, ultra-sounds on my eye, and all my cell counts are normal. They can't cure something if they don't know what it is. It could be viral, it could be bacterial, it could be something in my autoimmune system. It could be a worm. It could even be caused by under cooked meat or even vegetables that were not washed properly. So just a word to the wise, no more medium rare and scrub your raw veggies! Be careful at salad bars! Basically they are grasping at straws and eliminating what it's not. In the meantime I'm not getting any better. I don't really feel bad, except from the meds. My vision is cloudy and it itches a bit but it's rarely painful. But I'm extremely light sensitive.
I just want it over so I get get back on with my life and maybe able to start a family someday. Oh yeah, this antibiotic causes my birth control pills to be less effective (not that I want sex right now, I feel so fucking unattractive) but if I were to get pregnant it can cause birth defects and miscarriages. Yah fucking yah. Not that I'm ready to be pregnant, but then at least I'd have an excuse for this extra fucking weight. Also I wouldn't want to get pregnant right now because:
1. We have no money. I realize there's never enough money and things can never be planned out to a tee but I'd at least like to have my debts settled.
2. We need to buy a house. When we're out of debt, and my season starts up again at work and the old man who hit me with his car's insur co reimburses me for those medical bills, we're going to save up for a few months and put it down on a house (if I don't have to put it toward my eye bills!).
3. I don't want to get off these meds, get pregnant and then they put me on something even worse. That's really what I'm afraid of. I don't want to hurt my own child. We can survive in debt and living paying rent instead of a mortgage. We can sell my car, or this computer or any number of other things we don't need and aren't truly important, but I just couldn't handle being the cause of my child's pain. :(
Well enough depressing shit. I'm not actually depressed, just frustrated (and my knees hurt sitting here,) but let me end on a funny note, this is something I'm dumb enough to do. lol:
A man is walking by an insane asylum and hears all the residents chanting, "Thirteen! Thirteen! Thirteen!"
Quite curious about all this, he finds a hole in the fence, looks in and someone pokes him in the eye.
Everyone in the asylum starts chanting "Fourteen! Fourteen! Fourteen!"
On a possible good note, the doc just put me on an antibiotic and one of the side effects (prolly the only good one) is loss of appetite so maybe it'll balance out. Also I'm drinking tons of water, nothing else if possible. I still crave juice, but since I do the grocery shopping I control the fat, and calories (and ice cream and junk food), so if I don't buy it, we don't have it! And I won't buy it. But whenever I go to my parent's house I pig out. It's full of snacks. Chocolate and ice cream and chips and crackers and sodas and 15 different kinds of cereal. You can't begin to imagine! My dad grew up in a household with 6 brothers and 1 sister. If you didn't make it to the dinner table on time, you didn't eat. They didn't know what snacks were. So when my dad got kids of his own his idea of spoiling us was junk food. Good thing we are all athletes or we'd be HUGE! (like I'm getting now!) I'm trying to avoid going over to their house but our family is so close knit, it's hard.
The other bad thing is the steroid is killing my joints. It breaks down cartilage and can cause hip degeneration, loss of calcium, and from prolong usage osteoporosis, so I'm taking lots of supplements but my knees are killing me. It hurts to walk, stand and even sit for too long. Even my shoulders and elbows are starting to ache now. My eye doc is sending me to a rheumatologist. My appointment isn't until March though. It's so hard to get in there.
There are 2 other "super" eye specialists in San Antonio that do what my doc does. So since he can't figure out what's wrong with me and nothing is making it better we may all get together for the "Grand Rounds" and have a big pow wow and see what they can come up with. My doc says it will prolly be free too. Which is great because the insurance co is still fighting me on this. They are trying to see if it's a "pre-existing condition" because it all happened so close to when I got married. I didn't get married to get the fucking insurance! I happened to get insurance because we got married after 5 1/2 years! Argh!
I keep sending the insur co the same paperwork over and over again (since October) and they keep fucking shit up. I've given them permission to get my medical records from the 6 months before we were married. They keep saying "Oh we asked those docs, they aren't responding, so we're not going to pay or even do a review of your case until we get the proper responses. Of course in the mean time all the docs I've seen since then want to get paid and are threatening me. And of course the docs I saw before this (and even the new ones-which for some reason they want those records to, how could it be pre-existing if those are the docs I saw after I was on the insurance?), I've talked on the phone with and actually went to the offices and none of them have received any letters of release or faxes (which the insurance co claims they sent at least twice) from the insur co. The doc's offices have no reason to lie. They want to help me, they want to get paid! I even sat there at one office and watched them fax over my medical records, of course the lady couldn't find the fax right away. I was on the phone with her the whole time. It's so fucking frustrating! If they don't want to pay, just fucking say so and get the fuck out of my life. I don't need this extra hassle. The other problem is every time I call I end up talking to a different person so of course they have no clue except what they see on a computer screen and if the other people I faxed shit to didn't or have yet to enter the info, it isn't there. Of course that doesn't mean I haven't done my part (over and over and over again). But does that stop them from sending me threatening letters in the mail? Of course not!
Like I said my doc has me on a steroid called Prednisone. It is bad in high doses and for extended periods of time. Well back in Dec I was on 60mg for a week. Nothing. Then he upped it to 100mg which made my legs swell up like a sausage and it killed my knees. But then my eye started to look better on the inside. The doc said there were less cells and the redness on the outside wasn't as bad and my vision was getting a bit better. So since it was so bad to be on such a high dose of the steroid he weaned me down by 20 mg each week. Well when I got to 60 he wanted me to go to 50 for 2 weeks and then 40 for 2 weeks. After one week of being at 50 my vision got really bad and the out side of my eye turned very red but in a concentrated area. Before it wasn't as red but more spread out. Also there is a protrusion on the outer side of my eyeball. It's icky! So I decided myself to go back up to 60mg. Now he upped me back to 80. I hope this works.
I told him we needed to do something drastic. All this up and down crap isn't working and it's just prolonging it. I told him I'd rather be on a high dose of the steroid since it seem to be working at 100mg and be in a lot of pain but for only a short period of time (maybe 2 months)than be on a lower dose for a looooong period of time (5-8 months) and still be in almost as much pain. Trust me, when your joints hurt, a little or a lot doesn't make any difference!
The problem is all my tests have come back negative. Everything! You wouldn't believe what I've been tested for. Everything from tetanus, to syphilis, to lyme disease, to lupus, to herpes, to bronchitis, to AIDS. I've had x-rays on my lungs, shitloads of blood work, ultra-sounds on my eye, and all my cell counts are normal. They can't cure something if they don't know what it is. It could be viral, it could be bacterial, it could be something in my autoimmune system. It could be a worm. It could even be caused by under cooked meat or even vegetables that were not washed properly. So just a word to the wise, no more medium rare and scrub your raw veggies! Be careful at salad bars! Basically they are grasping at straws and eliminating what it's not. In the meantime I'm not getting any better. I don't really feel bad, except from the meds. My vision is cloudy and it itches a bit but it's rarely painful. But I'm extremely light sensitive.
I just want it over so I get get back on with my life and maybe able to start a family someday. Oh yeah, this antibiotic causes my birth control pills to be less effective (not that I want sex right now, I feel so fucking unattractive) but if I were to get pregnant it can cause birth defects and miscarriages. Yah fucking yah. Not that I'm ready to be pregnant, but then at least I'd have an excuse for this extra fucking weight. Also I wouldn't want to get pregnant right now because:
1. We have no money. I realize there's never enough money and things can never be planned out to a tee but I'd at least like to have my debts settled.
2. We need to buy a house. When we're out of debt, and my season starts up again at work and the old man who hit me with his car's insur co reimburses me for those medical bills, we're going to save up for a few months and put it down on a house (if I don't have to put it toward my eye bills!).
3. I don't want to get off these meds, get pregnant and then they put me on something even worse. That's really what I'm afraid of. I don't want to hurt my own child. We can survive in debt and living paying rent instead of a mortgage. We can sell my car, or this computer or any number of other things we don't need and aren't truly important, but I just couldn't handle being the cause of my child's pain. :(
Well enough depressing shit. I'm not actually depressed, just frustrated (and my knees hurt sitting here,) but let me end on a funny note, this is something I'm dumb enough to do. lol:
A man is walking by an insane asylum and hears all the residents chanting, "Thirteen! Thirteen! Thirteen!"
Quite curious about all this, he finds a hole in the fence, looks in and someone pokes him in the eye.
Everyone in the asylum starts chanting "Fourteen! Fourteen! Fourteen!"