My Body Needs A Pep Talk

I saw my rheumatologist yesterday and she was impressed with how much is going on with me medically these days and none of it was related to rheumatoid. LOL.

Actually, its not very funny. She looked at my x-rays and explained a bunch of stuff to me. Basically each vertebrae in my back has issues around its edges and the bone spur in my neck is pressing on the nerves which cause problems in my neck and shoulder, exactly as I am feeling. She was also concerned with the osteoporosis in my spine.

However, this all sucks.

My body is not doing its share. It needs a pep talk to regroup. No more ailments. Especially ailments that usually occur in the over 80 crowd. (Personally I am sick of the phrase 'you are so young to have this'.) It needs to stop developing new ailments. It also needs to heal from my damn 'fall' last week. I still don't feel right.

I am skipping the gym again today. I was exhausted yesterday and all I did was go to my doctor, visit my mother, and go to my knitting group. I even left early and went home to rest. I have another craft show tomorrow and am running out of oomph.

So body, listen up: No more ailments. No more long healing times. No more injuries. Start getting your act together and no more whining. Thank you. The management.

Disease combinations = confusion and lack of support

When you get a disease, you learn about the symptoms, treatment, and when you will feel better. Add a second ailment and things get confusing. I was told I had rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia about the same time. And I have osteoarthritis too.

I was also told it can be hard to tell which ailment is causing which pain. I can tell sometimes - when a ribbon of pain rushes across my back, that's fibromyalgia. When my knees grind as I walk down the hall, that's osteo. When my fingers decide not to cooperate, that's rheumatoid. When I need a nap, that can be fibromyalgia and/or rheumatoid.

But then I look for support - medical and emotional. The medical support is usually fairly good but then sometimes I get told 'you need to ask your doctor for that other ailment about that'.

And emotionally, I dig around to find people like me. I have found a support group for those with chronic pain but its not that convenient for me. I found a fibromyalgia support group and don't really like how its run. (Its run well, but its just not run in a way that works for me.) I was just told about a new support group for people with chronic illnesses (and told that unfortunately I am eligible for that one too) that I may try.

I have also looked around for medical resources and bloggers who are like me. I frequently find medical articles and studies on one ailment but not on people with more than one. I know most medical research is done focused on one ailment but there must be more people like me. I haven't found any really.

I did find a study that states that if you have breast cancer or thyroid cancer your risk is double (or so) for the other one. I know of two people (besides me) who have had both.

My complaint I think (if its really a complaint) is that the medical world is not set up for people with multiple ailments. Its really designed for one ailment at a time. If your treatment changes you need to wait for that medication to kick in before you can go on to the next ailment. This can takes months. Most RA treatments take three to six months before their impact is felt. So that leaves me stuck in pain or cranky. Or just confused and isolated.

Being a complainer

There is a difference between complaining and being a complainer. I complain sometimes, we all complain. And we should. We should speak our minds and make our wishes known. But if we complain too often we can become complainers where we are either Chicken Little or the Boy who cried Wolf so that when we have real complaints, they get lost or overlooked.

Here is a tale of a complainer who complained so often that her complaints became overlooked and she ended up diagnosed with stage IV thyroid cancer and died from it which lead to a malpractice suit.

I think there are a couple issues in this story. The patient complained so much and spent so much time talking about other issues that it became difficult to discern real medical issues from other issues. Of course her doctor could have done more to figure out the cause of her symptoms but he and a specialist could not find anything that significant and attributed the diagnosis of acid reflux  as the cause, which is very common.

When I am the patient, I come in prepared for my appointment with a list of questions to make sure they were all addressed. I would have also kept the list from one appointment to another to make sure something is being done to find out what is wrong with me. And if it dragged on to too many times I was back in for the same thing with no change or resolution, I would get pushier and want more options.

With my medical background, I know you are never too young, too old, or too anything for a diagnosis.

I also know all medical personnel are busy and need to be told a story about a complaint. Don't say 'I have a pain', say 'I have a pain when I do this or eat this', etc. We need to make it easy for my doctors to get to the bottom of the problem. We don't need to share pictures with them or tell them about the rest of our lives. We need to give the  medical professionals as much information relating to our health problems to help them help us.

We should not be complainers but we should tell about our complaints so we do not end up like the patient in the story.