Talking of autumn, I started picking our raspberries on Thursday and picked more yesterday. The result: a large bowl of fresh raspberries and cream for dessert yesterday. (Perhaps I should explain that mine are autumn fruiting raspberries.) And very nice they were, too. I do need my food at present as I think I need to put on weight. I noticed this week that I seem to have lost quite a lot: my trousers are very much looser round the waist - indeed, they now rest on my hip bones - and my hips have become quite scrawny. The real give-away is my watch. This used to sit snuggly on my wrist but now slides up and down my arm just like a bracelet. Look:
I rather hope that the steroids I have been taking the last few days might help build me up again. I saw the consultant on Thursday and he prescribed them. I did wonder just a little at the start of the consultation. He is a rheutologist and having watched me hobble along the corridor and into the consulting room ( and remember, he had a letter from my GP as well) he asked, "What seems to be the trouble?"
After I had explained the situation and he had taken copious notes, he asked me to strip and lie on the couch.to
"Hmm," he said. "Your wrists are swollen, [I didn't think they were but my hands were.] so are your feet and your knees."
He listened to my chest and tested my reflexes before coming to a decision.
"You have rheumatoid arthritis," he told me. I managed to refrain from replying that my GP had confirmed that and it had been diagnosed more than 25 years earlier.
Anyway, he hummed and hahed a bit more and asked more questions. He wanted some blood tests but then realised that they had been done recently and he was able to phone the hospital and get the results.
I came away with a prescription for steroids - what seems to me to be a fairly high dose - which I am to take for a month. Another consultation in two weeks will decide if I can reduce the steroid dose and start on another drug to control the arthritis (and possibly damage my liver but I can live with that as I will still be allowed a glass of wine with my dinner). Meanwhile, I have been taking the steroids for just three days and can already see and feel a staggering improvement (pun intended).
If I had to choose a theme song for today, it would be:
Hey look me over, lend me an ear, Fresh out of clover, mortgaged up to here, Don't pass the plate folks, Don't pass the cup, I figure whenever you're down and out, The only way is up.. And I'll be up like a rose bud, High on the vine, Don't thumb your nose folks, Take a tip from mine, I'm a little bit short of the elbow room, But let me get me some, And look out world, here I come...
~~~~~
And so to our bridge pic. This is the amazing Accademia bridge over the Grand Canal in Venice.
3 comments:
I'm glad to read the steroids are having good effect. Your consulting physician would have left me less than confident in his abilities, though.
I hope you don't run out o' bridge pics anytime soon... I'm thoroughly enjoying these.
I think it was probably just that the consultant adopted a rather casual approach which hides his ability. My GP - whom I trust implicitly - recommended him highly.
Just a few more bridge pics up my sleeve but we are getting near the end.
I certainly hope the meds help. My Grandmother had hideous R.A., so I know how devastating it can be. I've lived in some fear of it being inherited by me, but so far no go (Thank God).
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