12-14-08 Update

Another doctor’s appointment down. Not a whole lot of good news from it, but that’s SOP. My blood tests have shown a little improvement, not much, but a little. So the doctor decided to wean me off the steroids; if doing so doesn’t increase my pain levels too much, that will be one less thing to worry about, what damage they’re doing. Over the next 4-6 weeks, we will be upping the dosage on the chemo drug to about 2.5 times my original dose. She’s doing it gradually to make sure I continue to tolerate the side effects reasonably well. This past Friday was my first dose on the increased dosage and I have to say, the dizziness was spectacular. Imagine being on the Tea Cup ride at Disneyland for about 36 hours straight. It’s a good thing I didn’t have any place to be, even if I could’ve driven myself, I would’ve looked like a raging drunk.

Pain meds were also doubled, which leaves me feeling perpetually hung over. Not sure how functional addicts do it! I’ll be cutting those back down and only upping them when it’s absolutely necessary. As nice as it is to have relief, my job kinda requires the use of my brain, otherwise having hands that don’t hurt is pretty much useless! We discussed doing cortisone injections in one of my hips but I’ll need to get an x-ray of it first, just to be sure there aren’t any other issues going on with it, besides the inflammation. She wants to avoid the injections if possible though, and thankfully the hip has calmed itself down from where it was. I’m not one to call complaining in between appointments, so she knew it was bad when I called her nurse asking what the heck to do! Texas weather is a killer though and going, literally, from setting a record high at 81 degrees one day, to snow the next is not the kind of rollercoaster I like to ride. Although it’s only snowed once, we’ve done the 80 to 50 dance a few times in the last few weeks, and of course, 50 during the day means at or below freezing at night. Not exactly an RA sufferer’s friend, that’s for sure!

For all the bad news though, my hands have shown slight improvement since we started the new meds. I no longer look like I go around punching people all the time – the redness has diminished some. They still get red, but it’s not a constant state of being. The swelling is still just as bad though. Both middle fingers are the worst of the joints on my hands, so our running joke is that I need to stop flipping people off (hey, it’s either make a joke or cry; I choose to joke about it). My toes are pretty nasty though. The members of the Schmutz clan reading this can attest to the fact that none of us were born with particularly pretty toes (another thing I joke about with the doctor), but I think I’m the winner of the ugliest toes contest right now. Two of them are curling so badly that I’m almost walking on the nails (and on really bad days, I AM walking on them). She says it’s due to the fluid in the joints, so hopefully that will correct itself as we get the inflammation down. For now, though, my dream of being a foot model has been put on hold.

That’s pretty much it. I’ve finally finished fall semester, which I thought would never end. I should’ve taken the semester off, but I pushed myself, which I now realize was a mistake. Therefore, I’m not registering for next semester. My hope is with the extra rest and new meds, I will be in a better place to focus on school later on. It hurts to have to put it on hold, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right? My next appointment is in January and we’ll reassess then. For now, I’m staying on the every two weeks injections because she didn’t want to change that variable on top of everything else. We’ll see how things go for the next six weeks or so. All of the love and support I’ve gotten has made things easier, so thank you for all the notes and well wishes! Love you guys!