'Sup with the Warrenski's?: Yet another health update

I apologize I haven't had much fun stuff to post about lately, but I guess that's pretty indicative of where I'm at right now - but I promise that should change soon. I'm actually doing ok emotionally, I promise - just fighting to stay positive and push through all of this, remain hopeful and mindful, etc. Wanted to update you on my rheumatology appointment and injections really quick, and then onward to happier topics later this week, I swear.

Rheumatology was super interesting, to say the least. I was amazed by the doctor - he was incredibly thorough! We were there for 2.5 hours for my intake and he asked EVERY question under the sun. The intake paperwork I filled out in advance took an entire hour, and not only did he review it before coming in the examination room (gasp!) he went down paths that other doctors have either ignored or dismissed as insignificant. I was so impressed and encouraged. Even though we were there because of my vertigo and in hopes that the low IGg (immunoglobulin) levels somehow related, and could then be treated, thus healing the vertigo, he went down completely different paths to address other concerns. He picked up on the fact I've had back pain since I was a teenager, had years of plantar fascitis that didn't resolve until I had surgery, have had lots of incidents of join inflammation over the years, etc. He is a firm believer that I do in fact have an autoimmune disease, which of course was pretty emotionally difficult to hear. While Rob and I were trying to adjust to that - and in fact my sweet Rob was feeling pretty frustrated that while we're there for vertigo, we might be heading down a whole OTHER path that may or may not even be related - in a way, it's nice to have a doctor connect the dots. And ultimately, if there's something going wrong in my body, we have to solve it - related to vertigo or not. And, if there's even the most remote chance that it can help my inner ear heal - then that is a HUGE bonus. I have to proceed with faith. Speaking of, love this quote I stole from facebook.

The Rheumatologist ordered a grip of blood work to do gene testing to rule out a bunch of autoimmune diseases including Spondyloarthritis and Sjogrens Syndrome, and we're testing for other stuff too. I'll also get a back Xray and MRI (to further look for joint inflammation), an eye test to look for eye dryness (which is apparently a big indicator of Sjogrens), a liver ultrasound and a dance off. haha! Not really on the dance off, but pretty much feels like I should have something fun at the end of all of this. I see the doc in a month to review all this testing and we'll go from there, but in the meantime he put me on a strong anti-inflammatory hoping that'll help at least with the pain. Though, frankly, that was the least of my concern - would rather he had a magic pill for the vertigo but you can't win 'em all.

Speaking of, we started the 3 steroid injections on Monday and holy Moses was it gnarly. They put a numbing cream on my ear drum and then waited 45 minutes before the actual injection through the ear drum - and let me tell you, I shouldn't have peaked at that stupidly long needle, but I did. I am proud of myself for holding still like a champ because it hurt. But weirdly enough what hurt worse was AFTERWARDS - the whole rest of the day I was in agony, it felt just like it did during my ear infection with pressure, soreness, etc and I couldn't even chew. I had to lay on my left side all day (even in the car) so leave the steroids in as long as possible so it didn't drain down my eustacean tube and I watched a ton of bad TV and movies. Tuesday was better, I was just sore/tender there - but at least the agony part was gone.

Needless to say I was pretty nervous heading into the 2nd injection yesterday but the ENT was so perplexed that I was in so much pain after the first injection, since apparently that "shouldn't" happen, and I do have a good pain tolerance. He thinks he might have accidentally scraped my inner/middle ear, inflaming it with the steroid. Um, super. Well, the great news is this 2nd injection was a piece of cake! I was stoked, other than the annoyance of laying on my left all day and being sore/inconvenienced, it was easy peasy. Plus, I have a great hubbs who is so lovely and took care of everything, even brought me soup with a straw and peanut butter and chocolate chips when I needed to eat my feelings. Yup. He's mine and you can't have him. I even had my own physical therapy assistant who laid on his side with me in sympathy.

And now, I always have to end with something funny and this made Rob laugh so damn hard. A few weeks back, I had some dental work to put some resin on some of my sensitive teeth, but they had to numb me since they have to push back the gums in order to cover the nerves (yah, ew, whatever). But, we were cracking up because I had this total Elvis thing going on one side of my face and I couldn't help it...it just made us laugh harder and harder and before you know it, we were both crying and couldn't even look at each other without dying laughing.