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Back on LJ - at least on work time. :)
Jan. 31st, 2007 11:51 amHello all -
Just wanted to let everyone know that my current health issue has at least gotten down to manageable portions. While I sneeze a lot and am half stuffed up most of the time it's pretty functional. Of course, it isn't "Grass & Tree Season" yet, but I'm hoping that something will be in the works by then. Assuming I can find a doctor that will give me a price quote and find out where to get the gene testing done. My blood pressure had been slowly getting more normal, along with my pulse. My regular doctor seems to have turned me loose after making me come in and do blood work (AGAIN!) so they could test my blood sugar. I really want to find a good general MD, because I keep wanting to just go to specialists as needed since generalists just seem to take care of the immediate issue, then forgot about you. Hell, my sleep doc and my gynecologist seemed more on the ball with my myriad issues by far. I haven't checked the actual BP or heart rate lately but I'm going to try to get to it later today. I want to see if I'm back to normal. I can also add caffeine back into my diet which is v. nice since tacos & popcorn must have Coke. I have decided to try and cut out pop in general and am trying to replace it with Pellegrino and lemon juice when I can since my sugar levels were "borderline".
I figured while I was here I should explain (since it seems most people don't understand what I'm talking about and I always forget that not everyone hangs out in the weird ward of medical knowledge) why I'm concerned about allergy shots.
My family is rampant with autoimmune disease - my Mom, my brother, two of my cousins, and two of my aunts, and my Grandmother all had one (or in one cousin's case two) autoimmune diseases so you can see where I might be concerned. These are diseases where your own immune system turns on some portion of your body and while they have finally isolated the gene responsible; acquiring an autoimmune disease takes two things - the gene & some unidentified event that sets the immune system off. So, you can see why aggravating my immune system on a daily/weekly basis for years would make me a bit hesitant. I could conceivably lose my allergies and end up with Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn's or Polymyositis which are only a few that others in my family already have.
Plus, 10 years ago or so, when I first had allergies, I wasn't allergic to cats or dogs but after living with cats for 7 out of those 10 years, I became allergic to them. (And FYI, I had arranged for the dog long before I found out I was now allergic.) I'm not sure that allergy shots would work. I know shots are different than just being casually exposed, but my immune system seems to want to get all excited about things I am around a lot: cats, dogs, grass, trees.... In a way allergies are a *tiny* version of an autoimmune disease - it is your immune system taking that one little dander and turning loose an army to deal with it. It's basically overkill, and that in a way is exactly what autoimmune diseases are - an overreaction to something that was once OK. Like your colon.
So, I'm doing OK on the health front - and other than that our lives are still pretty much in hell - we're working through it though, and I hope that we'll become more social sometime soon. We are getting away over my birthday in February off to Whistler with my family for at least part of the week, and hopefully we can unwind and become more able to deal with all the shit that is going on. Unless of course it turns into a family nightmare adventure, in which case I may explode.
I hope everyone else's 2007 is going much better than mine!
Just wanted to let everyone know that my current health issue has at least gotten down to manageable portions. While I sneeze a lot and am half stuffed up most of the time it's pretty functional. Of course, it isn't "Grass & Tree Season" yet, but I'm hoping that something will be in the works by then. Assuming I can find a doctor that will give me a price quote and find out where to get the gene testing done. My blood pressure had been slowly getting more normal, along with my pulse. My regular doctor seems to have turned me loose after making me come in and do blood work (AGAIN!) so they could test my blood sugar. I really want to find a good general MD, because I keep wanting to just go to specialists as needed since generalists just seem to take care of the immediate issue, then forgot about you. Hell, my sleep doc and my gynecologist seemed more on the ball with my myriad issues by far. I haven't checked the actual BP or heart rate lately but I'm going to try to get to it later today. I want to see if I'm back to normal. I can also add caffeine back into my diet which is v. nice since tacos & popcorn must have Coke. I have decided to try and cut out pop in general and am trying to replace it with Pellegrino and lemon juice when I can since my sugar levels were "borderline".
I figured while I was here I should explain (since it seems most people don't understand what I'm talking about and I always forget that not everyone hangs out in the weird ward of medical knowledge) why I'm concerned about allergy shots.
My family is rampant with autoimmune disease - my Mom, my brother, two of my cousins, and two of my aunts, and my Grandmother all had one (or in one cousin's case two) autoimmune diseases so you can see where I might be concerned. These are diseases where your own immune system turns on some portion of your body and while they have finally isolated the gene responsible; acquiring an autoimmune disease takes two things - the gene & some unidentified event that sets the immune system off. So, you can see why aggravating my immune system on a daily/weekly basis for years would make me a bit hesitant. I could conceivably lose my allergies and end up with Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn's or Polymyositis which are only a few that others in my family already have.
Plus, 10 years ago or so, when I first had allergies, I wasn't allergic to cats or dogs but after living with cats for 7 out of those 10 years, I became allergic to them. (And FYI, I had arranged for the dog long before I found out I was now allergic.) I'm not sure that allergy shots would work. I know shots are different than just being casually exposed, but my immune system seems to want to get all excited about things I am around a lot: cats, dogs, grass, trees.... In a way allergies are a *tiny* version of an autoimmune disease - it is your immune system taking that one little dander and turning loose an army to deal with it. It's basically overkill, and that in a way is exactly what autoimmune diseases are - an overreaction to something that was once OK. Like your colon.
So, I'm doing OK on the health front - and other than that our lives are still pretty much in hell - we're working through it though, and I hope that we'll become more social sometime soon. We are getting away over my birthday in February off to Whistler with my family for at least part of the week, and hopefully we can unwind and become more able to deal with all the shit that is going on. Unless of course it turns into a family nightmare adventure, in which case I may explode.
I hope everyone else's 2007 is going much better than mine!
