Life with a Flare

No one will ever be harder on yourself than you are. When I was diagnosed with AMPS a couple months ago I was told I needed to push through the pain. This idea was reaffirmed when I went to see the PT and OT at CHOP. This is what I have been doing. I have not missed a single class because of my health yet this year. Besides for when the Mobic did not work I have not gotten to the point where I have called my Rheumy. I have not missed a commitment or scheduled event. I am proud of all these things but at some point the pain started getting even worse this week, something had to give. I did everything I normally do plus put some of the anti-inflammatory fancy cream on a few joints. It is homecoming weekend, I was going to push pass this flare, I had to push passed it. Two weeks ago I had decided I was going to go out this weekend, yet here I am writing this blog post instead (not that I don't enjoy blogging but...). The past couple of mornings haven't been pretty. I have ha...

Today I am going to write about a taboo subject- body image, and how living with chronic illness/pain has affected it. I get told how great my body is a lot, I am tall and fairly skinny. Not to be egotistic but I look pretty good in a bikini. I should love how I look. I should be confident of my body, after all I just bought a pair of size 2 jeans. Yet I still struggle with loving my body. My New Jeans! In middle school I thought my legs were fat, that was when I had muscles from horseback riding, today I miss my muscular legs. My thighs tend to be two different sizes, the left one is almost always smaller. The reason for this is simple, my left quad has atrophied from months of limping and being on crutches when I was 15/16, at one point it was so bad my doctor measured it and the difference was a good 2 cm in circumference. Today they are almost the same size, and probably look the same to anyone else, but to me they still look different. If you haven't guessed it yet, ...

This morning I woke up to a red painful swollen wrist. My right wrist was not happy or useable for the better part of the morning. Of course my mom wanted to make a rheumatologist appointment for this week but I really did not think it is worth it. Since I am now in the 2 week period before my hip surgery I can not take anything but Tylenol anyway (no voltaren or fancy cream), so there is not a whole lot that can be done. We finally settled on me going to my GP (for the 2nd time in one week as I had a pre-op appointment with him on Monday), and I took a picture so I can show my rheumy at my next appointment. I managed to get an appointment at 11AM because my GP was in the office this Saturday. By the time of the appointment my wrist looked pretty normal, although I had the picture so he could see something was up. He had it x-rayed just to rule out any issues non rheumatology related, and as we both guessed the x-rays came out normal. My Lovely Wrist this Morning I was left wit...

Senior year is coming to an end, and with that comes senior prom. As I stated in a previous post I decided on my shoes without taking my joints into account, which is the way I should be able to (but was not smart). Even though my shoes fit me last week I struggled to get my toes into them Saturday. By the end of the night my feet killed, although anyone who wore shoes like mine would probably of had sore feet by the end of the night. My left knee did not do well, it is the only joint that really can not under any circumstances handle heels, even when my meds seem to be working. It gets clucky and catches and clicks and pops (although the last time I wore heels was over 10 months ago). I put some fancy cream on both my left hip and my right knee before I attempted to dance. I did manage a little dancing which was nice. At after prom at my friend's house we went in a hot tub which really helped calm my joints. The whole night was actually amazing and better than I could have ev...

My new NSAID cream came in the mail today, it is very fancy and actually contains 5 active ingredients. What is really cool is it came with a sheet that explained how each one works. Note: most of the below explanations come from previously mentioned sheet (which is why they sound so intelligent. Diclofenac: (The brand name of the oral from in Voltaren, aka my favorite NSAID cause I am cool enough to have a favorite NSAID) If you haven't guessed by all the stuff in the parentheses, it is an NSAID, and as the cool sheet says, it works by blocking the arachodonic pathways of the inflammation ( I really wish I actually knew what this meant, maybe I will google it) Baclofen: A muscle relaxant and anti-spasmodic that reduces the neurotransmitter release from pain receptors generating ectopic impulses. (I understood everything except the second to last word, not bad) Cyclobenzaprine: A muscle relaxant that helps control muscle spasms and tightness residing in the area of localize...