Health Update

Note for New Readers: I know this is not Disney related, but when I started this blog, I said it would not be all Disney related.  This blog is also to talk about my life and health situations and getting to know who I am.  Here is a little bit about me so you can get to know me better outside of the Disney realm.

I realized that I hadn't written one of these in a while. Mainly because my health situation has been pretty steady and relatively boring....aka, just the way I like it! This has changed recently, some for the good and some, well, we really don't know if it's bad or not yet.

The good was a change in the style of injection that I take.  I take Enbrel and was on the "SureClick" for a long time. For those who do not know, the SureClick is a kind of injection where you just press a button and hold the tube to your skin and it injects the medication for you.  This was working fine, but the SureClick has a preservative in it that, for some reason, causes a larger amount of pain than with the other versions of the medication.  I hadn't minded this for a long time, but recently I have been so frustrated with the weekly soreness I would get from the injection that I decided to look into other options.  I settled on the prefilled syringe, which is just like a normal syringe for vaccines or shots but comes shipped with the medication already measured out.  I tried my first one today and WOW what a difference! No pain or irritation, it was so nice! I am so glad I decided to switch and if there is anyone else out there using the SureClick and having issues with pain, I highly suggest you switch.  Some people are worried about actually sticking themselves with a needle, but this one is so painless, its very easy to do and the needles itself is not that big at all.

My other bit of news is about playing yet another game of "What the heck is this?".  Odd, pin-point like marks have began spotting the top of my feet and, not knowing what they were, I called my Rheumatologist thinking it was a medication reaction. For those who may be wondering, they do not hurt or itch, I really cannot feel them at all, and when you press on them, they do not go away, which caught my attention.  My RA doc looked at them today and said she did not know what they were. So, I am off for a second opinion to my primary.  If he doesn't know, we will try to bombard the marks with a short term steroid treatment to get rid of them.  And if that doesn't work, it's off to yet another doctor, a dermatologist, to see if they can diagnose it.  There is a small possibility this could be the very early stages of something serious, but we are not jumping to conclusions and quite honestly, I'm not even gonna mention it right now because it is irrelevant until we try all of this other stuff.  So the end of next week I have an appointment with my primary and hopefully we can get this sorted out then and I will have more good news for ya!

My Thankful List 2010

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!! This is a list of just some of the things I am thankful for this year

I am Thankful For....

-the love of my family

-the love and support from my boyfriend, Chris

-all of my great friends

-my good health the last year

-the food and shelter I am blessed with

-the education I am lucky enough to have

-the great student teaching placement and the wonderful experiences I am sure to have there

-Walt Disney and his amazing dreams

-Twitter, for I would never have known about the large Disney community, met so many amazing friends or found my prince charming without it

Please remember those who are not lucky enough to have some, if any, of the blessings we have this year.

What are you thankful for? Leave me a comment below about what you are thankful for this holiday season!

Wishing you and yours the happiest Thanksgiving!

Health Update

Just thought I would give a brief health update since I had a Rheumatologist appointment today.

According to my doc, I am doing very well, the Enbrel is working well, she has filled a perscription for a year and everything looks like its going good! I am so glad! She even told me a few exercises that I can do without causing too much impact, so I think I am set to go for the summer! The only bad thing I found out today was that eventually I may develop osteoarthritis, but that will be a while away and as long as I take care of myself like I have been doing, I will be fine for a long time!

So glad things are finally looking good on the health front! :)

Where have I been?????

I have honestly been wondering about this question myself lately!

I first want to apologize to all of my great readers for not having anything posted recently here. Thank you for being so patient with me! Because of your great patience, I thought I would let you know why I have been less active recently and how I have been.

The first reason of course is school.....it always gets in the way of the important stuff.....I started that a few weeks back and unlike my last semester when I had at least 1 day off per week, I do not have that this semester. I have class Monday through Thursday and on Fridays, starting this week, I will be teaching from 9 to 3 at Chester Community Charter. I am looking forward to this even though there is a lot of work involved. I found out that this is my very last field placement before student teaching next spring....wow is that never wracking!! Oh, and pile on top of that the 4 PRAXIS tests that I have to take and pass by December......yikes......

My health has been doing quite well recently. The fiasco I was going through with my medication has been subdued for at least a while and I have my medicine and am doing quite well on it! I have been so well I have actually started to regularly work out about 3 times a week at the gym at school. It is great fun and quite relaxing. Get to listen to my Disney music and bike around, its a great time!

My honors class has been taking up quite a bit of time. I am still writing my paper on something Disney related, I just haven't been able to pinpoint what I want to write about as of yet. At this point, I am contemplating doing the paper I was going to work on this summer, which is examining Walt Disney's vision of EPCOT and seeing how realistic and possible it would be for today's society. That will give me some more time to brainstorm on the other topic I am going to cover for my last paper. I have also been working on creating a blog for my Honors class. We need to get our name out more, so I figured one of the best ways to do that would be a blog. Once I have done some work on that, I will post a link to it from here so you can see what Neumann University Honors is all about.

My radio show on Sorcerer Radio, Sorcom Review, is still going very strong, as is my Neumann Radio show Imagine the Magic. Still having so much fun with those, I really enjoy the radio!

With all of this craziness around me, I was finding it difficult to fit in the things I really want to do: Write on my blog and talk Disney! I am going to try a lot harder to put this in though, I find it so relaxing to talk about Disney, I think it would really help me balance the other stuff I have to do. I do have lots of stuff to write about and I will work to get it all posted.

Again, thank you for your patience with a crazy college student, you all are awesome!!

Peace, Love and Mickey Mouse!!

P.S. Keep your eyes open for something that Chris and I have in the works as well.....

Disney's Fight Against Germs

Pictures have surfaced of Hand Sanitizers that are being installed throughout the Disney Parks in Florida. It is in response to the H1N1 Pandemic. There is a sign above the dispensers giving tips to stay healthy and you can also find the tips inside the maps.

What do you think about this? Good idea for Disney? Is Disney being too safe by adding this new feature? Let me know what you think! Leave a comment below on this post or send me an email at lady_aurora_yensid@hotmail.com. I find this a very interesting addition to the parks, but I am not completely sure how I feel about it.

Brief Health Update

Ive been so busy with school and Disney that I forgot to give a health update! I got a month's worth of Enbrel from my old doctor just to hold me over until we are able to meet with someone to talk about a payment plan for the medication. Hopefully I will get the help paying, but right now I am just happy to have some medicine! I'm heading to the doctor to get some blood work done this morning. I'll hopefully remember to keep you all updated now! :)

New Doctor-Old Medications

Tuesday the 13th, I went and met my new rheumatologist. She is at Christiana Hospital in Delaware. I admit, I was upset not to be going to the children's hospital anymore, but one must move on when they hit the age of 21.

What made me miss the children's hospital the most was the change in exam rooms. In the old hospital, there were butterflies painted by some of the children on the ceiling tiles and colorful posters, including ones with Mickey Mouse, in the rooms. At this new hospital, there was not much color and on the walls of the rooms, there were posters describing the disabling process that RA takes on the body, including this one terrible poster that showed the joint damage that happens to hands over time and I could not look at it because seeing what may happen to me someday upsets me and is something I do not want to think about right now. I just want to focus on what I am doing now and keeping myself the way I am right now, dwelling on the future and what may happen does nothing for me.

The doctor herself was very nice and I am quite excited to be going to see her! She explained everything well and did not cause any pain during my exam at all! She is definitely a good doctor to go to and am looking forward to my follow-up in 2 months.

Why do I have a follow-up in 2 months? First is because my doctor is pregnant and she wants to see me one more time before she takes her maternity leave. The second is because we may have to decide on a new medication to start me on. The short of it is that I am having problems getting the Enbrel because of the insurance plan that I have and I may not be able to stay on it. This really stinks because this medication was making me feel better than I have in years. Right now I am not on anything, this is the first week of being on nothing and we are gonna see how bad I am in the next couple weeks. Depending on how fast I decline will decide what the doctor prescribes me just to keep me going until the appointment. After that, we will decide what route to take next. If everything works out, I will be on the Enbrel once again and everything will be fine. If this does not work out, we are looking at 3 options. 1-Another type of shot just like Enbrel (Humira, Symphoni...) 2- A 3 hour infusion every other month (the medication begins with an R, but i keep forgetting the name of it) and 3- Back a step to the Methotrexates! My goal: Avoid the Methotrexates at all cost! It all depends on what happens in the next few months, so we shall see.

How am I feeling right now? So far, not much pain, I have just been feeling a bit run down, but this could also be because of school. The next couple days are going to be pretty cold here, so that will be a test on my body for sure, but we shall see what happens. I will keep this blog posted with what happens as this process continues.

My Health

So, I've been complaining a lot about doctors and feeling bleh lately and I figured I would explain what its fully all about.

Freshman year of high school (2003-2004), I had some weird sick spells; from poison ivy on my ankle making it swell up to a melon size, to having pain in my wrist every time I would play my flute. My friend had been diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel and I thought I would get that checked out, so I went to the doctor after school was out.

That summer was filled with blood tests that told me that I had Lyme Disease, which I had to go on medication for immediately. After a brutal summer which included my second and worst trip to Disney World thanks to the insane medication I was on and a lot of blood work and false diagnoses, I went back to school in the fall with the final diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis.

What we later figured out was that the "poison ivy" that I had in the fall was not really poison ivy, but a tick bite that did not form in the usual bullseye mark, so I never knew it was that. So I had Lyme Disease festering in my body completely unchecked for almost 10 months and while it was wreaking havoc, it brought out my genetic disposition for RA about 50 years earlier than I would have gotten it if I did not get bitten.

I went to a rheumatologist and was given medications to take that worked well with only minor dosage increases for almost two years. It took some getting used to, but I was doing everything I could before with only minor pains.

Problems came back August right before senior year. I had maxed out on the one medication and was given a new one, one with sulfa in it. I was on it for three weeks and was feeling great! The fourth week came and I got really sick. Turns out that I am allergic to sulfa and I was on the brink of having total liver failure. We stopped the meds and went on the old medication so my body could be monitored. It took 5 months for the swelling in my liver to go down completely. After I was better, I started new meds, avoiding sulfa and trying to find something that would work well.

This is what brings us to today. For the last two years, I have jumped from one medication to another. Some have not worked for my arthritis and others just ripped up my stomach so much that I didn't care if the helped the RA cuz I was in too much pain otherwise. I have been on every single NSAID (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug) that I can go on and none of them work for me and my difficult body. My doctor knows what he wants to do next, he wants to start me on methotrexates. Only problem is that I am switching doctors in September when I turn 21. I am at a children's Rheumatologist right now, so I have to switch in September. The methotrexates are a chemotherapy that my doctor like to carefully monitor because of the extreme affects it can have on the body and, since I will not be with him much longer, he does not have the time to monitor as he will like. So, I have to wait until Oct. 13th to see my new doctor and get the medicine that I need. Right now I am living on a steroid to kind of bide my time until I can go on the medication that I am supposed to go on.

That is my basic health spiel from the last 5 years. Sorry for the length but I figured you guys should have an idea whats going on in my crazy life.

Whats wrong with me and doctors?

I keep mentioning about me going to the doctor and not knowing whats wrong with me and I realized that you guys don't really know what is wrong, so I thought I would shed some light on the subject.

I will write a longer post soon about my major problem, but the reason I went to the doctor today was because of dizzy spells that I have been having for the last couple months. They hit me out of no where and for what seems to be no reason. They happen almost every day and it doesn't matter if I am sitting, standing or laying down. I have had two sets of blood tests ran and no one knows why this is happening. My doctor today told me that I have to go to a Neurologist to get some more tests done. I am just frustrated because I am sick of dealing with the dizzy stuff and I want to feel better!

I'll start working on a post about my other problems soon. I will apologize in advance for its length, because it is a long story.