Well, if any of you follow me on facebook you know that I had a doctors appointment today. I was really close to cancelling it but decided not to and I am glad that I didn't. Not that I didn't want to go, but just for the simple fact that I didn't want to drive to Phoenix two times this week. But, such is life. It goes on! So, I kept the appointment thinking that I would take an early lunch and the appointment would be pretty quick. Well, the doctor (the resident) came in after I had been in the room about 2 minutes and started his assessment. He was very impressed with how much of an improvement I had made. I think he thought that since they were lowering my steriod dose that I wouldn't improve as much. Well, I did. Everytime I go in they test my strength. They do all these little tests like hold my arms out and try to push them down and I have to resist it. I haven't been able to keep my arms up and today I was able to keep them up! It has been well over a year since I have been able to do that! So the doctor went to get the other doctor so that he could assess me as well to make sure the resident hadn't skipped anything. He got the same results. I hadn't seen this doctor before, but he was really good and knew a lot about this disease. He has been doing a lot of research on it and was very informative.
This doctor was gave me a few options with my medications. Most of you know that I have been going every other friday to get treatments at the hospital and I have been taking the steroid daily. Well, he gave me all my options and we decided that instead of taking the steroid daily I will take it once a week...this will help minimize the side effects I have had like weight gain and a puffy face...all those pleasant things. The down side to taking it only once a week is that I will have a horrible taste in my mouth for 1-2 days and I probably won't sleep for 1-2 days. If any of you have been on steroids you know that it makes you very energetic...nervous...anxious...you get the picture right? They are going to keep my treatments at every other week because they don't want to change too many things and then if something doesn't work not know what it was. I will see the doctor again in 2 months. At that time if I am doing well on the steroid they will lower that dose and also change my treatment to once a month. They want to taper me off the treatments first because they know that the steroid is supressing my immune system and that is what they need! There hasn't been enough research done on the treatment to know if it is able to suppress the immune system, but they know for sure the steroid can do that.
I am confident they are on the right track, but they believe I am in remission. HOORAY! They are just going to keep me on the steroid and taper that off so they can know for sure that it is in remission. Idealy they are hoping that by the end of the year I will be completely off all the medications. SSOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! That is my good news for the week! I was pretty excited!
Oh yeah!!!! One more thing...there was one blood test that they hadn't done on me! Believe it or not out of the 100+ vials of blood they took they never tested me for Lyme's Disease. I don't think I ever had it, but they think that it can cause the body to respond the way mine has so they drew the blood today to test me for that. They are also going to be redoing my MRI because my last MRI was abnormal. I guess the nerve roots in my brain were enlarged so they want to check those to make sure everything is looking good. So, I will keep all posted on that!
