More wonderful medical news

Of course, I get all the fun stuff. I have both rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. It never ceases to amaze me that some people do not know what either are. Yes, Virginia there are disgustingly healthy people out there who do not know about yucky unhealthy stuff.

So it overjoys me to read new research about my ailments. Especially when I find research that says the really lucky people who have both RA and fibro, have many more problems with RA than people without fibro.

One article is titled: Fibromyalgia Symptoms May Mimic High Disease Activity in Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis. That title sort of says it all doesn't it? So even if I don't really have high disease activity, I will just feel like I do.

This article is from Egypt and is titled: The Impact of fibromyalgia on disease assessment in rheumatoid arthritis. I has some lovely charts and tables that compile the list of issues.

Table 2. Somatic manifestations of studied rheumatoid arthritis patients.

Somatic manifestations percentage (%)	Patients		P value
	RAF (25)	RA (25)
Widespread pain	100	28	less than 0.001
Sleep disturbance	68	32	0.011
Fatigue	92	52	0.002
Morning stiffness	56	36	0.156
Headache	56	24	0.021
Depression	88	40	less than 0.001
Anxiety	72	40	less than 0.001
Parasthesia	76	32	0.002
Cognitive symptoms	56	16	0.003
Dysmenorrhea	20	20	1
Irritable bowel syndrome	16	4	0.157

RAF: rheumatoid arthritis with concomitant fibromyalgia, RA: rheumatoid arthritis.

When I was diagnosed with both RA and fibro, my doctor told me I probably would not be able to tell which ailment caused which pain. Sometimes I can but sometimes I can't. And sometimes I just don't care.

But now that I know fibro makes my RA feel worse, I'm not going to suck it up. I think I should switch to chronic whininess. I think chronic whininess outweighs chronic pain. Some research news inspires whininess.

A big step back in the flabbiness fight

Unfortunately I had a big step back in the flabbiness fight. I really did some damage to my knee (and forgot to blog about it) when I was only trying to water the plants in the back yard and fell when (or because) my knee bent sideways. I didn't break anything but I am now the (not so) proud owner of a lovely knee brace to prevent further sideways movement.

The knee doctor gave me the lovely brace and sent me for PT and said come back in two months and we will see what's going on then. On the good side, I can do my PT at the gym for dilapidated people where I go and not have to bombard my schedule with three times a week appointments for PT. I can go once and get my exercises and then do them when I want, there or at home.. On the bad side, if I don't wear my brace, my knee keeps giving out and I have to wait until I could get an appointment with a physical therapist at the gym.

I will go for my first PT appointment shortly and hope to be able to get back to some exercising. I haven't been exercising and am very concerned about the flabbiness fight. I can't just go for a walk these days. I haven't dared to go to the gym until I saw the knee doctor. And now after speaking with the gym about my knee, their advice was to wait until I see their physical therapist and set up knee exercises before trying too much.

So I am sitting around on my ass too often. I am also closely watching my food consumption to prevent further flabbification. And my knee gives out way too often if I am not wearing the (stupid) knee brace (will I get tan lines from it?) so that I got a second smaller knee brace to wear in bed.

Okay its not cancer, but its a royal pain in the ass. Do I get some sympathy? I can just start whining?

Please stop changing your mind!

The news: saturated fats not bad, trans fats very bad. Now they tell us. Thank you.

Does this mean all old research will eventually be turned upside down and we can eat ice cream and chocolate every day? I find this very irritating. Its just not fair to all of us who make dietary choices now and then find out later they were wrong and we could have ignored the advice.

Actually what really annoys me is that this also happens with medical advice and it turns out whatever procedure you had was completely unnecessary.

But it is the price we pay for progress sometimes. Even though it is irritating.

When your body lets you down

It happens to all of us - you reach for something and your back twinges, you get a bad cold, or whatever, they are part of life. But then sometimes your body really lets you down.

This became very clear to me one day when I was skiing about ten years ago. I was having a wonderful time and then I fell on one run. I thought I was fine but some man stopped and said he friend had gone for the ski patrol. I thought he was crazy but since he insisted on waiting with me, he could help me untangle my skis. Then when I put weight on my knee it bent side ways and I knew he was right. I ended up with a torn meniscus and a partially torn ACL which meant knee surgery and the beginnings of knee problems.

My body has since let me down in other ways. I seem to have collected ailments that won't go away. Tennis elbow, lymphedema, bad back, rheumatoid, fibromyalgia, and that cancer crap. They just keep piling up. Yesterday afternoon I got very frustrated with myself. I try to be a normal person and then my body protests.

Sometimes I feel I should be in a geriatric ward some place with all my aches and pains. But then I try to tell myself that I got through cancer twice so I can cope through all this. But its the continued emotional spiral of coping with aches, pains and scars that is difficult.

I haven't been getting enough rest recently. Nor enough sleep. This makes it harder for me to physically and emotionally deal with life. And since we are at the worst part of the chaos of putting our house on the market (which means I will take our toaster oven with us today so it will not be in the way while they take pictures of the house). I will bring it back tonight so we can have toast in the morning and then take it with us again as they show the house. This is on top of the list of everything else I have to do today to make the house picture perfect.

My biggest problem is with everything I cannot do. I can't carry stuff around (one of my doctors told me that I cannot pick up everything after I told him we were moving). I have to wait for my husband to be home to carry stuff around for me. I get stuck and have to wait for help so often. My body is failing me too soon. And it drags me down and I constantly have to fight back.

Okay, enough whininess this morning. I will go back to being positive.

We are still waiting!

I haven't nagged in a while but I would like to remind the world that all of us unhealthy people are waiting for that cure. We have aches and pains and doctor appointments and prescriptions (out the whazoo!). We would like those cures so we could return to our normal life as soon as possible.

Once diagnosed with something nasty, life changes (and we are told there is this new normal - that doesn't exist) and are stuck in a yucky limbo waiting for medical advancements to put us back together.

There are a lot of politics and corporate policies and big brother and much more involved in medical research. We don't really care. Take your billions and fix us.
K? Thanks.

PS I am whining and in a cranky mood today.