Calamity Jane Not So Calamitous

A few posts ago, I mentioned how it was the phone that started it all and in more than one way. It turns out I had no idea how many ways.

Turns our that the phone started what appeared to be some sort of domino effect of calamities worthy of an irritable and hungover Mercury Retrograde. First, the telephone crapped out. Once I'd gotten a new phone, my voice crapped out. When I got my voice back, I cracked a tooth. There was a deadline and a nasty case of writer’s block and then my computer developed an incompatibility between Word and Dragon (what? Is this the universe’s subtle way of telling me I should give up writing?). I'll spare you the rest of the details of last week, suffice to say that it went downhill from there and included a number of events that by Thursday had me convinced that if I did not supervise every single thing that could possibly, remotely impact me, the world would end. Thursday was also the day that I officially lost my composure about the whole thing, which naturally just attracted disasters to me as if I were a magnet and they metal shavings.

That is, until I went to see my doctor to get my Humira shot and the results of some blood work we'd done. Nothing out of the ordinary, just to check, because it's a good idea when you have arthritis to every now and again do a check on things and both of us had forgotten for about a year, since before I started Humira (I know - oops!). All my life, my blood levels have been weird, especially the ones related to anemia. So weird, in fact, that every new doctor I see gets all worried about how anemic I am, while not quite understanding my dismissive attitude. The thing is, when for as long as you have had blood test (which, in my case, has been over 40 years), your values have looked funny, it becomes normal. Maybe not Normal, but normal to me. My red blood cells are small and pale, my values are... Well, let me illustrate...

My doctor showed me the results on the computer and there were 4 or 5 columns indicating my results at different dates. There were some red numbers scattered about, with red indicating abnormal, and then we gone to the 8-10 rows indicating various factors of anemia. And they look like this, with each column being a specific date

X X X X X

X X X X X

X X X X X

X X X X X

X X X X X

All of them are red. Not one black. It's been like that for as long as I can remember, even when I was taking Enbrel. We then looked at the results from my latest blood test - my sugar was "perfect", my cholesterol well within normal ranges, liver function good, iron good, B-12 good and then we came to the eight or 10 rows indicating various factors of anemia. And they were mostly black. There were two red numbers, but they were so close to normal that it wasn't worth noticing. Black. All of ‘em. Indicating normal, or rather, Normal. My doctor told me that if I were to apply for health insurance and the insurance company would only have access to my blood work, I'd be accepted in a snap. And that's when I started laughing, barely holding back the tears. After three years on Biologics drugs that have had these incredible effects on my health and life, after many moments of having my world rocked by instance after instance where all I can think is the word miracle, I thought I'd reached the point where the miracles were over and now it was time to just live with it.

And then there's another one. Because according to my blood work, there is absolutely nothing wrong with me. I haven't assimilated it yet, still don't quite grok the magnitude - every time I get close to the edge of thinking about it, I start laughing and tearing up and my brain skitters away from this awe-inspiring thing bigger than anything I've ever felt. Because according to my blood work, there is absolutely nothing wrong with me. According to my blood work, I am a very healthy woman. I have been many things in my life, but never healthy and it blows my mind to such a degree that I can do nothing but laugh with tears in my eyes.

And speaking of big feelings that changed a bad patch to something wonderful. This weekend, we congregated at the nursing home to celebrate my sister's birthday and I got to see my lovies again.

Liam demonstrates his flexibility

And Morgan shows a flower to her new stuffed cat.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weight Gain and Biologics: The Battle of the Pudge

Image
The Seated View has moved .  I am still bringing you the information and support you need to live a better life with RA and chronic illness, just on another site. I'd love for you to visit my new website ! - Lene If you want to leave a comment or question about weight gain, RA, and Biologics and are looking for answers or feedback, please jump to this post on my new site . It has the capability for direct replies, this site does not. You can also reach me at leneATyourlifewithraDOTcom. - Thanks, Lene I’ve known from the beginning that Biologics can affect your weight. When I was on Enbrel, I couldn’t keep weight on, and looked anorexic despite eating like a horse. When I switched to Humira, I started gaining weight. I, who had never before spent much time past a size 6, became a 10. After years of being   literally skin and bones, it suited me just fine.  And then the gaining continued, until finally settling around a weight that requires a 16 pant. Never having been thi
Read more

Real RA: It's Not Just About the Jar

    The drug commercials like to show couples walking on the beach with a dog (it's always a beach with a dog), but real RA is not like that. The image of remission is a return to sparkling health with no lasting effects, but real RA is not like that. This is the first in new series of posts about the ways RA affects your life, the unvarnished version.   Last week, Kelly over at RA Warrior tweeted a link to a post about the silly things people with RA say . It’s a brilliant list of the overly optimistic things that come out of our mouths, such as committing to being somewhere early in the day (impossible because it takes a while to get going when you have RA) or the "me do it" ridiculousness that inevitably brings about a flare in symptoms. Opening jars - or rather, the inability to do so - is often mentioned as the ultimate example in frustration, smacking into your limits and plain humiliation. For Kelly, it's not a jar, it's a set of heavy blinds.
Read more

Farber’s Disease: Could Your Child’s Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Be Misdiagnosed?

Image
Joint inflammation or contractures. Nodules (small lumps under the skin or in other tissues). A weakened or hoarse voice. Children with these symptoms may have been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or other types of juvenile arthritis . But do they actually have JIA or do they have Farber’s disease? An equine digression When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. This is an adage in the medical world that encourages doctors to not wander off exploring rare and esoteric reasons for a patient’s symptoms. Because most of the time, that hoof beat of a rash likely isn’t the plague, the joint pain more likely a type of arthritis than the bends (especially if the person has never scuba dived) and you get the picture. But once in a while, it actually is a zebra. And even if it’s first identified as a horse, eventually, the stripes come through. It took five years of my parents running around to different doctors before one finally recognized that I had
Read more