that vision thang

I went for my new IV infusion drug today to the rheumtologist. My blood pressure and heart rate were a little high (despite the blood pressure medication I take every day) when I got there, but within normal. They weighed me (the dosage is based on weight) and started my drip.  Once they calculated I needed more than was in the usual bag, they added the extra. Right away, the IV started to feel itchy, which I though was just all the damn tape holding down the needle. My throat started to itch. I assumed it was hot and I'd only had soda all day, so I needed water. Asked for it, got it. Then my eyes got itchy. And I felt a little out of breath. And a hive popped out on the other arm.

Dammit. A full-blown allergic reaction to yet another new medication (Orencia). I caught it earlier this time than last time, so I escaped the EPI pen, but not the oxygen mask, IV steroids injection, or wonderful, knock-me-on-my-ass IV Benedryl.

One of the nurses who came in to help with the anaphylactic emergency today was also there when I had my reaction a couple years ago to Remicade. She remembered me and my name from that episode. (I told her that if I needed the EPI to please not tell me this time; it hurts too much if I'm expecting it. As she tells me I won't need it, I can see the other nurse putting it out on the counter. I'm having a reaction- I'm not blind or retarded!)

And I felt even more special when the staff assured me that this was the first reaction to Orencia they had seen. I turned bright red, and had hives all over. I needed to take my asthma pump on top of straight oxygen. And needed a saline flush/bag as well! Plus, I had my own babysitter who didn't leave my infusion room until I was ready to leave. Given the reaction and the Benedryl effects, they wouldn't let me drive home myself. I had to call my aunt who was watching the kids to come get me, starting off the "How the hell do both I and the car get home?" puzzle.

My aunt wanted me to stay overnight at her house and not worry about it, but with grasshopper and the kids up, and the fact that all of my meds were at home, I couldn't.  I said I'd stay till I felt better; then SiL brought Hubby up to drive my car and us home. I had already been forced to buy a packet of Benedryl and take a pill while standing in the supermarket with my aunt on the way home from the doctor's. (Throat and eyes and pretty much all over got itchy and hivey again.) Nothing like tearing into the box before you've got your change, as the stupid teenage cashier is doing the required "Have a nice day!"

The nurse at the office had said that the reaction might come back if the IV Benedryl burned off. If that happened, I was to take another Benedryl and call 911. I was not to take myself to the hospital, but take an ambulance-- the ambulance had the meds I needed, and someone's car would not. I asked three times, because we all know how much I LOVE my emergency room visits.

I opted to hang with my aunt the nurse for a few hours until I was pretty sure I was okay. I managed to stay awake, in case I had a further reaciton, but downing Coke after Coke for the caffeine, which I am definitely feeling today.  I took another Benedryl before bed to be sure, because the itching (hives) started up again. I'm fine this morning, except for a bit of swollen/puffiness under my left eye that feels like its gone up, not down, and feeling like I've been hit by a Mac truck. Everything aches, joint-wise. The fibro feelings of cold and pins-and-needles are there, but not too bad, and my back is better (another acupuncture session yesterday morning and a massage the night before).

This just sucks, though. The doctor promised I would have a reaction to this, that the last reaction was to a mouse protein (or some other scientific word) in the medicine that this medicine lacked. As soon as he came in, as I was sitting there looking all pathetic and hooked up and splotchy- I yelled at him that he was wrong. I was only joking, but he apologized a couple of times, so I think that he took it seriously.

So, I spent my night doing research on-line. I have several people urging me to try traditional medicine for my RA and fibro, and I've already been trying (thanks to hubby's cooking talent and vigilance) trying to eat better and more organic foods. So, I have a list of herbs to research, an allergist appointment to make today (let's get started on those food allergies), and caffeine to start easing off of. I drink to much of it to just stop, but the reduction will be planned out. Also, after another round of burgers on the grill and a steak, red meat (God I love read meat) is out of the diet as a first step. Not vegetarian, just no red meat.

This isn't going to be easy.

So anyone with homeopathic or traditional medicine suggestions for RA, Asthma, or Fibromyalgia, please send them my way.

Current Mood: disappointed

Goodness. Everyone seems incredible ill around me these days. Thankfully not the immediate family, but the extended, students at school, fellow teachers. You know its bad when a professional development day has been canceled in favor of a day off so we teachers can have an extra day of rest and get better (seriously, that was the announcement.) Actually, I've dodged the bullet so far, and it's making me nervous. I always get sick, very sick, when it goes around. And I'm on an immune-supressent for my RA/Fibro, so that's almost a guarantee that I will get sick. I feel like a prisoner waiting for her execution. I know its coming. I'm just not sure entirely when.

Also, the RA AND Fibro have decided to flare up and make me miserable today. The life of these diseases is incredibly disenheartening. Every time I think I've finally gone into remission, or am having a good streak, it hits and it hits hard. I have shown more movies and given more filler work this year in my room than I ever have before, and that includes the years my mother died, my stepfather was at the end stage of his cancer, and both years I was pregnant. I have never been so far behind in grading-- and its only the third week of the quarter! In addition, we would never have clean clothes if my husband didn't do the laundry (I do sort it and put it away, I haven't completely abdicated my household chores.) My house hasn't been properly scrubbed and such in months, though just quick cleaned (and that not in a few weeks.) Its just too much for to for me. I can manage one room, in about three times the time it used to take me, and the extra time is not just for kid interference.

My hands HURT today. My muscles feel like a suit of armor beneath my skin, and a layer of incredibly small, linked knots beneath that. The top layer of my skin feels as if its fallen asleep, but without the pins and needles- like its not quite mine, as if I've just borrowed it for a time. And no matter how warm the house is, my feet feel like they are in a bucket of ice water. It hurts to sit, to lay down, to move at all. This is one of the bad days, I think.

Current Mood: anxious

Why, oh why, do I listen to doctors? Shouldn't the woman with seven major conditions and as many specialists on speed dial know better?

SIGH.

Five hours in the emergency room last night. Waited to go until dance class was over and the kids were in bed. Poor Hubby-- who didn't really sleep the night before-- waited up for me.  Three hours sleep before hauling my pained and exhausted ass back into school to teach from my desk, using movies. Five periods, five kids falling asleep, and five assigned detentions (for tomorrow) later, I left school early with no guilt (for a change.)

I had a pain in my calf yesterday. The pain was different from the usual RA/Fibro pain. It was like a muscle cramp ache with out the cramp. And it wouldn't go away, and kept getting worse. I was bothered enough that I went to the school nurse, who I've ASKED people to keep away from if I should be unconscious and in need of medical aid. She said call my doctor. Duh. Called the primary, because the specialists were all gone for the day. His receptionist called back two hours later, said ti sounded like a blood clot, and told me to go to the emergency room.

I really considered not going. I listen to the doctor, get aggravated, and its never anything. Case in point-- the unresolved pneumonia spot on my lung from almost four years ago. (I went for 6 month CAT scans and checkups for two years before I refused to inconvenience myself anymore or spend any more money on co-pays.) Or the allergist, who gave me four shots once a week; made me completely allergy proof my house, aside from the cat confined to the basement (which he insisted I get rid of, but I was too soft to do so), a treatment plan that didn't even last out the month of September because my schedule is too hectic to spend two hours in a doctor's office plus traveling to it once a week.  If it is something, its always just something annoying I have to live with. Like the lump I found last year, and had to take a day off from work to get a mammogram, which turned to be a huge but normal cyst.

Plus, I'm switching anxiety meds; RA meds; muscle relaxer dosages. It could be any of those things, too.

I am nothing, however,  if not responsible. I have a husband and two children. If I were my children, and I (the mom) threw a blood clot and died because I (the mom) didn't listen to the doctor, I (the children) would be mad at me (the mom)  forever, dead or not. I did this for them and Hubby. I knew I had to. I knew I should. Still, it took some butt kicking (and scary links e-mailed) from B to nudge me into it.

At first, it looked like I might beat the Monday evening rush (every Monday I have had to go to the ER, it's been packed) and get fast tracked. A half-hour there, and the doppler/ultrasound thingee was done. The tech, when prodded, said no clot, definitely. Then back to the waiting room, to listen to white trash teenage baby-mommies order around retarded brothers and explain how she's been in here three times in five months because the hospital doesn't take good care of the baby-- the hospital she is sitting in. (No wonder no one was running to help her out when the kid puked on her.) To listen to kids retching into bowls and looking heart-breakingly pathetic. Bad re-run sitcoms, stuck in a wheel chair, the ex-Navy nurse mumbling very badly at me every time (3, after the initial triage, I might add) he checked my vitals. At one point, my blood pressure reading was 145 over something again. (Can't imagine why. I had just found out that there were still NINE people ahead of me, after having been there for four hours already.) Then the pressure miraculously went back down to something close to normal.

At any rate, here I am drudging through life exhausted and absent-minded and just spent. I didn't bring anything home to to do for school-- despite stacks of papers all over my desk today (one of the reasons on the list of why I couldn't call out, after the Flowers' Pajama Party at Pre-K/Daycare.)

Hopefully some muscle relaxers and an early bedtime tonight (sometime close to the kids', after I get a little bit of writing done) will help me be a wee bit more patient tomorrow. I can't tell if it's the drop in anxiety meds, the pain/fatigue, or just the students themselves, but my tolerance for senioritis is at an all-time low.

I need to count just how many more class days we have until graduation.

Current Mood: cranky