Sjogren’s Syndrome

Jet lag & Chronic Fatigue: a crippling combo

~ 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.

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New Challenges & Painful Consequences

~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

When visiting Thailand, there’s no time on the agenda to be aching, sore or ill, so during the last couple of weeks, I have thrown myself into life with great gusto.  As those motivating, life-affirming signs always tell you to do, I lived every day to the full;  as it were my last, in fact, and to hell with the consequences.

IMG_0218I took a longtail boat out in the pouring rain and explored the islands off the Krabi coastline.  I discovered Phra Nang Cave – a shrine of wooden penises!  I went snorkeling off of Chicken Island, though sadly there were more Chinese tourists flailing around in the water than pretty fishes in the sea.
me and elephant

I leapt from the top of a tree and into the unknown, soaring above the leafy canopy of a jungle, a stomach-churning 100 feet above the rainforest floor.  I said a silent prayer and abseiled down the trunk of an incredibly tall tree.

I fed bucket loads of bananas and sugar cane to some rescued elephants.  I stood waist-deep in murky water, washing and scrubbing their tough, bristly skin. I fed carrots to giraffes and stroked their noses; one sneezed on me. Very pleasant!

I experienced the lax and rather unofficial/unpredictable rules of the local road, clinging onto the back of a speeding moped.  I visited bustling night markets and had the dead skin on my feet nibbled off by 100’s of fish.  I had my knotted muscles and painful joints pummelled to within an inch of my life, and my skin scrubbed down, oiled up and kneaded to that point where pleasure starts to merge into a rather necessary pain.  I ate a lot of Thai Green Curry.

And then for the pièce de résistance in this bucket list of physical challenges: I scaled a waterfall.  Yes, that’s right, me, a person who often has difficulty making it up a flight of carpeted stairs.  I clambered up and down some very steep rocks into oncoming cascading water; barefoot and by hand, no less.

Sadly this impressive feat has IMG_1253nothing to do with a miraculous cure or some newly acquired superpowers.  Rather it was down to the limestone mineral deposit on the rocks at Sticky Waterfalls (officially known as Buatong or Bua Thong waterfalls) that turns even the most uncoordinated person with zero balance and climbing skills (that would be me) into a sure-footed, Spiderman-like superhero.

I’m now half way through the trip and it’s time to take regroup and recover; time to deal with those consequences I mentioned at the start.  I’m used to the drill and it’s nothing I haven’t experienced 100 times before.  But oh boy, why do those consequences have to be such a brutal wake-up call.

I’m into the fifth day of ‘post overdoing it’ agony: bone-jarring, head to toe pain, hypersensitive skin, inflammation in single every nook and cranny and the life-sapping lethargy that makes every set of stairs seem like a mission too far.

Remind me again how the hell I managed to scale a waterfall?!

Of course, I know my body will settle back down in time and forgive me for taking the proverbial.  It always does, eventually.  I suspect, however, it might take a little longer than normal to bounce back this time.  In hindsight, perhaps the Spiderman antics might have been taking things a step too far.

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Current status (say no more)

~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

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An unwelcome visitor came to stay

~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

sickandalwaystired.comcloudFor the last week, I have been living under a cloud.  A great big, heavy cloud that has hovered above my head and pressed down on me like tonne of bricks.

I’m not sure why this dark cloud descended on me one night, nor what started it or where it even came from.  How this unwelcome visitor snuck into the house and got past the dog, I have no clue; he normally barks at everything.

At the beginning of last week, I was feeling quite bright; the last of the azathioprine was loitering in my blood stream and I had some spare energy still knocking around. So to make the most of this ‘get up and go’, I did stuff.  I did a lot of stuff.  I did way too much stuff.  And then I paid the price.

By Thursday I was flagging, by Friday it was all too late.  Engines off, power down, body into battery saving sleep mode.  My ‘get up and go’ had got up and gone. Bugger it, why me and it’s not fair – I hate Lupus.

That day and the three that followed could most definitely be classed as inside the house days. I didn’t really move more than I had to, just a slow scuffy shuffle from room to room. I couldn’t be bothered to do anything, think anything or feel anything.  I didn’t want to read, write, rest, eat or brush my hair.  Worse still, I didn’t want to talk, laugh or even smile.  I’d completely lost my happy.

Sure I’ve had slumps before, but none like this.  My mood was as flat as a Dover sole.  But why?  Everything in my life (health aside) was great, yet I felt utterly miserable, desolate even.  I also felt strangely detached from everything and everyone around me, and I didn’t know how to reconnect.  Worse than that, I couldn’t summon up the energy to even try to reconnect.

Thank God for my husband, the one who knows me so well.  He watched, waited and persevered.  He tried every trick in the book to chip away and dig me out from my pit of misery and gloom.  It took a painstaking line of questioning, several pick axes, a crowbar and a box of tissues.  Oh, and a box of my favourite Lindor chocolates.

Two days on and I’m still not sure what that was all about.  Perhaps it all stemmed from my frustration and despondency over the great medication fiasco.  Or perhaps my brain was short wiring from months and months of erratic sleep.  Or maybe my body was simply objecting to going cold turkey after months on the drugs.

Whatever the reason, I’m hoping that wretched cloud stays well away and doesn’t invade my home or head space again.

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The one who knows me so well

~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

Husband: You’re looking tired. 
Me: I’m fine.
Husband: I said you were on the computer for too long yesterday.
Me: But I wasn’t. 
Husband: Hmmmmm. Why don’t you go have a sleep?
Me: But I’ve got things to do.
Husband: You’re falling asleep against the door frame. Go sleep.
Me: ………………..
Husband: Open your eyes, walk upstairs, shut the curtains, get into bed and SLEEP.
Me: Ok, ok.
Husband: That’s STRAIGHT upstairs. Don’t look for things to do. Don’t go in your study. Don’t open your laptop. Just go SLEEP.
Me (5 minutes later): Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Husband (3 hours later): You slept then? I said you were tired. 

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Life with Lupus? It’s all a bit sh*t

~ Rachel ~ 2 Comments

So what is it like to live with Lupus? Good question and thanks for caring enough to ask; most people never do.

Lupus is an unpleasant little disease that drains the life out of your body and time out of your life.  It can result in frequent hospital visits, constant tests and enough medication to make you rattle.  It can cause teeth-grinding levels of pain, uncontrollable exhaustion, terrible brain fog, facial disfigurement, dark thoughts, loneliness and an immense feeling of loss.  And that’s just the start.

In short, Lupus is a disease that can rob you of the life you planned to lead.  Future plans have to be reassessed, expectations lowered and energy levels micro-managed down to the very last ‘spoon’.

This may sound like a rather dramatic synopsis, but it isn’t.  It’s actually the harsh reality many Lupus sufferers have to deal with every single day.

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A dog walk too far

~ Rachel ~ 2 Comments

At the start of the week, I looked in the mirror and realised my total lack of exercise is starting to play havoc with my waistline.  Too many comfort calories and that muffin top is threatening to develop into a brioche.  And that, if left unchecked, could very well morph into a farmer’s loaf.

Time to get up and moving, I told myself.  On Monday I wheeled out my bike, brushed off the cobwebs and went out for a very gentle cycle.  All good so far;  I was still standing, all limbs working and one whole biscuit’s worth of calories burned off.

So the next day I woke up brimming with good intentions.  And then made the fatal mistake of thinking I could do more than I can.  Silly me, why do I keep letting my wishful thinking hijack my common sense.

I did the school run by foot and decided to live dangerously: I took the long way home. I’m only talking about a few extra roads and a quick detour via the park, but oh boy, what a difference an extra half an hour can make.

By the time I’d carried a happy, wet pooch through the house, I was fit for absolutely nothing. Yawning, exhausted and zonked out on the sofa.  I never learn, as my husband was quick to remind me.  ‘I only suggested you walk to school and then come straight home’, he pointed out, ‘not traipse around the entire village’.

Clearly, it was a moment of pure madness and one I’ve paid the price for all week. Argh. It makes me want to jump up and down and scream that I can’t do something as basic as walk the dog without knocking my body out.  All that effort to work off one sodding biscuit on Monday and I’ve probably eaten an entire packet since.

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I’m not lazy, I have Lupus

~ Rachel ~ 3 Comments

One of the more annoying things that people can say to me is ‘wouldn’t you feel much better if you exercised more?’  To me, that sounds an awful lot like ‘heave your untoned arse off the sofa and stop lazing around every day’.  But maybe I’m just being paranoid?!

Hmmmmm, exercise they say?  Now that you mention it, it does seem like the most obvious of cures.

Silly, silly me, how could I – or my doctors, come to think of it – not have thought of this sooner.  Let me flush all these unnecessary prescription pills down the loo, skip to the gym and body pump this chronic disease right out of my system.  Perhaps I could jump up and down, take a run, climb a rock, go for a swim or crunch my body into submission.  Who knows, once I’ve zumba-ed my way back to perfect health, maybe I’ll be able to walk on water, or, better still, turn H20 into wine!

I nod and smile through gritted teeth. Yes, I agree, it would definitely be good to do more regular exercise, but sadly that’s not always an option for me.  Most well-meaning and tactful people stop dishing out advice at this point.  But there’s always one. The one that never knows when to reel it in and zip it up. These people I could happily slap.

But why not, they want to know.  Exercise is ever so important they say.
Hold the press, groundbreaking theories being formed here:  Had I considered, perhaps, that it is my very lack of exercise that’s making me ill?

Had you considered, perhaps, that you’re getting on my very last nerve?

Have I tried a particular type of yoga? they enquire.  It’s called the Born Again Dying Swan and it’s all the rage.  Originates from the monasteries of ancient Tibet, apparently;  best-practised butt naked and balanced on a 2-foot pole in temperatures of exactly 89.9 degrees. Cures cancer and better than botox, so their best friend’s mother’s nutritionist said.

OK, enough now. I know in your head you’re trying to mean well, but out here in my world, you’re not.  Please just SHUT UP.   Why? Because in this instance you have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about.

Clearly, I know that exercise is good for you; it stops you getting fat and keeps you healthy.  Yes, I also know it can make you feel energetic, pumped up and happy to be alive.  But here’s the bit you don’t get.  For some people (that would be me) it can also wipe you out and leave you in a whole heap of pain.  A gentle walk or an overly ambitious bout on a yoga mat can cause joints to swell, nerve ending to burn and limbs to feel like they’ve been shrouded in concrete.  It can make my arms hurt and my bones ache.  And as for those incredible little endorphins that exercise releases? Believe me, when I tell you they’re simply no match for out-and-out, dog-tired exhaustion.

So yes, exercise is good and healthy and fun.  And yes, moving faster than a sloth on a regular basis would no doubt do wonders for my pathetic muscle mass and wobbly bits. But here’s the issue I have: there is simply no way of telling how much is too little or too much.  An extra 10 minutes in the wrong direction with the dog can be my undoing; there are no warning signs and there’s no going back.

So please people, quit with your well-meaning advice and consider this. Living an often sedentary life is most certainly not a life choice.  It is frustrating, boring and incredibly depressing.  Every single day I miss what my body used to be able to do and it often makes me cry.  In the good old days, I used to spin, swim, gym and downward dog with the best of them. Hell, I even kickboxed my way around the mat once upon a time.

So believe me (and every other medically induced couch potato) when I say nothing gets our backs up more than being told exercise will ‘make us better’.  No one is more clued up on possible treatments and ‘miracle cures’ than us, and if it were as simple as that, don’t you think we’d be out there pumping, squatting and peddling along with the best of them.

A little bit of sympathy and understanding, on the other hand, would go along way to making us feel better.  Ditto for flowers, chocolates, and dropping by for a cup of tea when we’re feeling low!

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Good doctors are an endangered species

~ Rachel ~ Leave a comment

From personal experience, I know just how long it can take to find a really good doctor. When I say really good, I mean one who’ll not only listen, pass the tissues and nod sympathetically in all the right places but also act on what you say and actually get something done.

Whether you’re at the local surgery or in presence of the lesser-spotted and rarely sighted rheumatologist, I find that half the time, these medically trained mortals are an impatient bunch. They sit, stopwatch in hand waiting to shoo you back out the door as soon as your allocated time slot is up.

As it is, I aways feel like a raving hypochondriac, as I hurriedly work through my pre-prepared lengthy list of ‘new’ symptoms.  During most appointments, no matter how fast I talk, I barely manage to get past the ‘Top 3 things I absolutely need to ask’. My handbag is now full of crumpled up old scraps of paper covered in unanswered questions and angry-looking doodles.

I often walk away from appointments feeling irritated and let down.  I rarely feel any more clued up (on why I feel so shit) than before I went in.  Many times I’ve been in floods of tears by the time I’ve reached the car; on one embarrassing occasion, I didn’t even make it to the parking ticket machine before the snivelling began.

I had assumed that once my Lupus had been diagnosed, the whole doctor situation would improve.  Back then I still had the optimism of course.

My first rheumatologist was absolutely useless.  Perfectly sweet and highly qualified she may well have been, but with all the personality of a bag of limp lettuce.  More worryingly, it seemed to me that she had little idea what to do regarding my treatment, and no obvious intentions of coming up with a plan anytime soon.

Every six months I’d return to her office and list the same issues and complaints; problems which were, unsurprisingly, getting worse with every visit.  Her response was always the same: she’d mutter and mumble about my bloods and tell me she ‘understood’. Now, ‘nicey-nicey’ isn’t really my bag at the best of times; certainly not when I’m looking for some decisive medical intervention.

The extent of her ‘treatment’ was recommending that I ‘stretch out’ the crippling pain in my hips when it got too bad.  Give me strength.  I didn’t wait for over 2 hours on a suspiciously sticky waiting room chair (not to mention many years just to get the appointment) to be told that.  If I could have fled the scene of the crime undetected, I would have throttled the useless woman then and there.  Luckily for her, I calculated that with my pronounced limp, I’d have likely been apprehended before I even made it as far as the nurses’ station.

When the stretching didn’t fix the pain (no medical degree needed to realise that one, Sherlock) she sent me off for a six-week ‘getting back on your feet’ physiotherapy course at the local old people’s home hospital. Dear god in heaven, what a truly hideous experience that turned out to be.  I was easily the youngest in the room by at least 40 years, yet still the only one unable to lift my legs up off the mat on command.  Pain and humiliation in one.

It was only when I mentioned to my Lupus nurse that I wasn’t exactly ‘enamoured’ with my allocated rheumatologist, that she told me I could request a transfer via my GP.  I hadn’t even known that was an option.  She recommended I try a different, slightly more pro-active doctor in the department i.e. one with less small talk and hand wringing and more ‘jump to it’ action.

A couple of months later I rocked up to see my new rheumatologist.  He promptly sent me off for an MRI, which in turn confirmed I had massively inflamed and swollen hip joints and a spattering of arthritis to boot.  Clearly, no amount of gentle stretching or cycle classes for the over seventies was going to sort that out.

A few short weeks later I was sent for a cortisone injection into each hip; a week after that I was practically pain-free and could finally walk again.  Halla-bloody-lullah.

That’s not to say the current rheumatologist is perfect of course, far from it really.  To this day I have still to get through my list.  And I often walk out frustrated and on the verge of tears.  But I guess the important thing I have to remember is that at least I can walk out now.  If I’d stuck with my first rheumatologist I’d probably still be ‘stretching it out’.

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When diagnoses are a bit like buses

~ 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.  Lupus Bus

Bus stop sign 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.

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