Jet lag & Chronic Fatigue: a crippling combo

August 16, 2016September 29, 2016 ~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

The downside of going on holiday is always the coming back and re-adjusting to the time zone you left behind. Little Miss Jet lag is a bitch to deal with at the best of times; tag team her up with Little Miss Perpetually Exhausted and this body of mine has hit a wall with such force that it’s unlikely to bounce back anytime soon.

Feeling dog tired is hardly an unfamiliar sensation of course, but after such a lovely month away, doped up on ‘holiday adrenaline’ and achieving all kinds of impressive feats, I’d kind of forgotten how terrible ‘lupus tired’ is. I had been hoping the azathioprine would have kicked in behind the scenes and be working it’s magic by now; sadly I don’t think that’s the case.

Since staggering through Heathrow early last Friday morning, my body clock has been all over the shop. I’ve had trouble staying awake and trouble staying asleep. Each morning I’ve been waking up well before the birds put in an appearance. Not waking up and feeling productive, mind you, just waking up and laying there feeling absolutely shattered. Consequently by late afternoon, I’m forcibly peeling up my eyelids to try to keep them open.

Rather than starting to perk up as I settle back into England O’Clock, today – my fourth day home – was the weariest so far. I was so far beyond knackered that by the time I’d eaten my breakfast, I was in need of a nap. The day didn’t really progress much from there. Aside from sewing on two name tabs and labelling some school socks with a pen, all I managed to do for the rest of it was lay on the sofa and binge watch a month’s worth of Sky Plus.

It wasn’t until I wandered into the kitchen just after 8pm that I looked down and realised I’d actually forgotten to get washed and dressed this morning. Clearly, my family is so used to living with a sloth that no one saw fit to even question my lack of daytime attire.

Here’s hoping I manage to function in a more vertical position tomorrow.

Current status (say no more)

June 13, 2016June 13, 2016 ~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

What is Sjögren’s Syndrome?

May 12, 2016September 29, 2016 ~ Rachel ~ 3 Comments

Bus stop sign Autoimmune diseases are a bit like buses. You wait bleeding years to be diagnosed with one, and then several roll up at once. Sjögren’s Syndrome (pronounced Show-grin’s) is one such bus. It’s often to be found hanging around with bigger, nastier members of the autoimmune disorder family, such as Lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Anything ‘autoimmune’ basically means that instead of protecting the body from infection or illness, the immune system reacts abnormally and starts attacking healthy cells and tissue. In the case Sjögren’s, the body’s immune system attacks glands that secrete fluid, such as the tear and saliva glands.

This shortage of crucial moisture leads to the two main symptoms: dry eyes and dry mouth. For women (who account for about 90% of all Sjögren’s cases) dryness can also be something of an issue ‘down below’. Yup, when it rains it really pours. OK, probably not the best analogy to use in a case like this.

In more serious cases of Sjögren’s Syndrome, the immune system goes one better and attacks other parts of the body as well. Symptoms include muscle pain, joint pain, stiffness and swelling, vasculitis (inflammation of blood vessels) and brain fog (difficulty concentrating, remembering and reasoning). The two worst symptoms (personally speaking) are the crippling chronic fatigue and joint pain. Though to be honest it’s hard to know these days which of my symptoms are coming from the Sjögren’s and which from the Lupus.

While it’s not a killer, having bone dry eyeballs can have a major impact on day-to-day life. If nothing else, it can make you look even more bloodshot and bleary-eyed than normal. Sometimes my eyes get so dry it feels like my vision in completely blurred, even though I can still see perfectly. It’s a horrible feeling, and I find myself constantly pulling my eyelids down to try and ‘shift’ the haze.

The symptoms of dry eyes can be made worse by sitting around in air-conditioning, sharing airspace with a smoker or walking outside in the wind. Travelling on an aeroplane can be sheer hell. Watching TV or staring at a bright computer screen for any length of time (like I’m doing right now) can also become painful. I think this has something to do with not blinking as much and the eyeballs drying out quicker – but don’t quote me on that.

Having a dry mouth is every bit as annoying. It can make your tongue feel like an abandoned flip-flop in the Sahara Desert. No matter how much you swallow or how much water (or whisky or wine) you drink, you’re still parched. This makes your mouth and tongue feel horrible and your lips dry and cracked. It also makes it difficult to swallow. I constantly feel the need to clear my throat or cough up a mucousy fur ball. At times I sound like a retching dog who’s been eating too much grass. Yes, pleasant I know.

Another frustrating knock-on effect from needing to drink all this extra water is the constant need to wee. It’s a standing joke in our family that I will need to go at least twice before I leave the house and then within seconds of the engine being switched off. Lazy muscles after popping out two children don’t help. I’m probably just one violent coughing fit off using Tena Lady.

You can read more here about the symptom of Sjögren’s Syndrome, who gets it, how it’s diagnosed and how it can be treated.

When diagnoses are a bit like buses

April 22, 2016September 29, 2016 ~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

My journey to diagnosis was a long and frustrating slog, to say the least. Partly because it’s a very difficult thing to diagnose and partly because no one would bloody listen. I often felt tempted to just give up trying to find out what was wrong. On a regular basis, I lost all faith in the medical profession.

Looking back I now know that my Lupus kicked in years ago. The first sign was the terrible pains in my legs and hips; some days they got so bad I could hardly stand up. I went to our local doctor in Australia (where we were living at the time) but he didn’t have a clue. He sent me off for x-rays but nothing showed up. He didn’t really bother to investigate beyond that, even though the pain continued.

Eventually, I found myself a chiropractor, who told me I had one leg shorter than the other. Diagnosis completed, as far as she was concerned. I was then sent to a podiatrist who made me a heel lift to wear in all my shoes.

What a proud Forest Gump moment that turned out to be.

Of course, no one wears shoes in Australia, they wear thongs (that’s flip-flops to you and me), so it doesn’t take a genius to work out you can’t wear a heel lift on a Croc. So painful hips, one leg longer than the other and then limited to trainers in the 40-degree heat. Oh, how I laughed.

Of course, the heel lift did nothing to help the underlying issue that was Lupus. Funny that seeing as being a bit stumpy in the limb department has absolutely no bearing on one’s immune system.

Adding to the drama further I then suffered a very miserable 3-month bout of vertigo. The full on type where the world spins around you, not the fear heights. Heel lifts no longer become such a concern as I could barely stand up without falling down.

This was later followed by a night where breathing became tricky and I lost feeling in both my legs. An ambulance was called and I was whisked off to the local A&E. The doctors were once again clueless. They tried to put it down to me overexerting myself at the time. The fact that at the time it happened I was calming sitting down, eating a yogurt and watching Greys Anatomy. So nothing ever came of that episode either, except of course an $800 bill in the post for the pleasure of my ambulance ride. Australia sure isn’t the cheapest place in the world to be sick.

Fast forward a year and I’m back in the UK. Out of nowhere my fingers suddenly started to go numb at the drop of a hat. One minute totally normally, the next I’d have a full set of bloodless digits; they looked like the hands of a corpse that’s been washed up after several weeks at sea. Not pleasant at all, but BINGO, suddenly I had my first diagnosis: Raynaud’s phenomenon.

Dodgy hips, random pains and unexplained bouts of tiredness continued, and then fast forward another year and my eyes were now dry and burning and my mouth felt like a forgotten flip-flop in the Sahara Desert. BINGO again. It’s Diagnosis Number 2: Sjögren’s Syndrome. Bit like buses these damn diagnoses.

I honestly can’t even remember how, why or when they reached my final diagnosis of SLE. For some reason, my GP failed to tell me she was even testing my blood for other things. So I suppose it stands to reason that she would also forget to tell me what they had found out.

The first I knew of it was during a nurses appointment at the hospital. Just a simple check up I thought, after having my numb, wrinkled fingers x-rayed and my dry, itchy eyes scanned.

So why am I seeing you today? I enquired of the lovely lady in blue.
I’m your Lupus care nurse, she said.
Why do I need one of those? (sometimes it takes a while for the penny to drop)
Because you were diagnosed with Lupus a month ago, she said.
Oh. Right. Good to know.

Queue much crying by the time I’d reached the car.

Letting sleeping dogs lick and lie

October 1, 2015September 29, 2016 ~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

Today my body refused to do as it was told. Logic and parenting instincts told me I really did have to get up when the alarm went off at 6.50am, but my arm still hurt after its stabbing yesterday and my head appeared to be glued to the pillow.

Any grand plans I might have had that day went right out of the window. Nothing unusual there. I ended up sitting in a chair in the window, nodding off in the sun like an old woman. Or a cat. When my limbs started to contort to the shape of the furniture I accepted defeat and ended up on the sofa.

Totally impossible to stay awake at this stage of the game; I hit that metaphorical wall and disappeared deeper under the blanket. Chronic fatigue is like being injected with anaesthetic. One by one, my limbs become dead weights as ‘sleeping serum’ seeps through the body and knocks you out. Bloody horrible feeling, not dissimilar to being encased in concrete, I should imagine.

With his chances of a trip to the park now ranging from slim to none, the dog gave up pacing the room and settled down next to me. He stretched out on the sofa and methodically licked each and every inch of his fur clean. Pretty sure this was his payback for the lack of a walk. The noise of the licking was like the drip, drip, drip of water torture, but I didn’t have the energy to bat him away with my foot.

Interesting how the dog still felt it important to look presentable, even if no one was going to see him that day. Couldn’t really say the same for his now comatose owner. I’d already encountered plenty of people that morning and had yet to brush my hair.

Not much else happened from here on in. I had a dream that I was desperately trying to get to sleep but was in too much pain. I woke up with a start to find I was crushing my poorly arm; it now hurt even more. The dog was patiently sat there, staring at me. I staggered out for the school run and a few hours later was back in bed. My hair remained much the same.

Some days you really just have to set your expectations low. Very low. Or better still, horizontal.