Hi Yall,...I've been having the strangest couple of weeks, medically speaking and was hoping yall could help me sort through some things out and maybe help me to understand a couple of things better...basically, I decided to go to the dentist and have my annual cleaning & x-rays before my surgery, well, my dentist saw some serious bone loss on my x-rays, after he came in the room and looked at my x-rays, he came over and examined my mouth inside and out for about 5 minutes, then he told me about the bone loss issue, to show me, he compared the x-rays from last year to the new ones and drew lines where the gum is and and another line where the bone is/was/should be, but you can plainly see it, across the whole lower jaw, I've lost a visible 1/3 inch of bone in one year, across the board, so he referred me to a specialist but never told me what he thought it was or what he thought had caused it, then the next day, I went for my pre-op labs & chest x-rays and got a little bad news there, I have to stop my Enbrel & Methotrexate (effective immediately), I have to be off it for 4 weeks before surgery and 4 weeks after...and I've been flaring for about a week already, so I'm not looking forward to that at all...
next stop, my PCP, this afternoon, for a kidney infection and corti-costeroid(sp?) shots in the bursa sacs of the hips...well, I've been flaring and it's 85 degrees out already, so I've been wearing loose clothing the last couple of weeks, I've been in bed most of the time, so today, getting dressed for my doctor appt., I get out a pair of skinny jeans and a tee-shirt that I know I've worn in the last month or so and they felt really baggy but I was running a little late already and I'm really hurting bad in my hips, I can hardly walk, Mike asked our son, Brandon, to bring me to my appt. and he was waiting, so I didn't really look in the mirror, I just knew they were big on me... I get to the doctor's office, they call me to the back, I step on the scale and I've lost 20 pounds!!!
, in a little over 2 weeks, I was just there 2 and a half weeks ago, so I go to the back and the Doc asks me a barrage of questions, I was back there so long that Brandon came back there to see if his Mom was okay...
Anyway, I answer his questions, basically: yes, I've been having night sweats lately, a couple times a week, severe bone pain from head to toe, the normal extreme flare (pain level of 14 on a scale of 1-10) but somehow it feels a little different, I can't explain it but it's just different, it's got a 'bone on fire' feeling, low-grade fever, no appetite...so I tell him all of that, he looks at my dental x-rays(I had em in my purse)...so to shorten this up, he said, "I don't want to alarm you but this is NOT good, I want you to prepare yourself,....(I don't remember what he said here but he said something else)....and I think it's time to go to a higher level narcotic for pain management and I will be following all the reports (everything is sent to him by all of my specialists) and you call me if you need aaannnyyytthhiiinnngg!"....it's just that I've been getting the 'kid gloves' treatment everywhere I go lately
and that is worrying me a little bit...I'm still mulling all this over, trying to really think but I don't know...it seems like a lot, only 2 things really got my attention, the dental x-ray and I was really shocked that I'd lost 20 pounds, I knew I'd lost a little but I thought it was about 7 pounds but I'm tall, I'm 5'8" and with the weight loss, I now weigh 125, I just haven't had an appetite lately but I've been making myself a eat a little something here and there but I do that when I'm flaring, which these last few years has been about 90% of the time but I don't usually drop more than 5-7 pounds...this is nuts, I hope I don't lose anymore...
Well yall that's it...sorry for such a long post and thanks for letting me get this off my chest!!
...any thoughts or advice on all of this will be so appreciated!!!
