Blog migration, and boring ramblings about my R.A. clinic visit.

Yesterday I had a doc appointment at the R.A. clinic. Actually it was with the nurse practitioner who I like so much better. I'm going to always ask that my appointments be with her from now on.

She totally listened to me. Helped me go over my meds list to change things up. As much as I was hating to go (I've been thinking of just finding a new Rheumatologist), I'm so glad I went! She looked at the sores on my head (I've got some scalp sores that at first I thought were winter itch, but they haven't been healing) and she said they were from one of my RA meds that she's having me stop anyway.

She gave me some topical patches to try, I'm wearing one and it's working very well. I'm so tempted to just mummify myself in this stuff, but I've got to make the sample last.

I'm set to get an MRI soon. I'll be making that appointment next week. She was very concerned about my hip pain, I was squirming in my seat a lot so I didn't have to express it too much, though I did have to describe it. It was completely night and day compared to my last visit when I saw the doctor who basically told me with RA I shouldn't have back and hip pain and wanted to know if it's maybe just stress. So I stressed out this whole month knowing it wasn't stress, but wondering what the heck might be going on. The nurse agrees with me that it's probably some form of spondyloarthropathy, which is just a big fancy word for RA in the back and hips. Duh, I've been telling them I'm dealing with that for almost two years now! From now on it's Nurse Chris! I really think she's the most on top of narrowing things down for me. After the MRI we figure out if I'll need physical therapy or just start with the massage therapy alone. I've got to find that gem of a prescription. I mean I get to go for massages once a week with it, how could I loose that! I suppose I could have asked for that to be re-written but I'll have to call in a couple days for the patches to be written up too so I'll do it then. In the mean time I'm just so grateful that the first signs of spring are starting to show up! My pain levels have gone down a lot, even though the last couple nights my hips have kept me up, I am doing better. My hands are amazingly so much better that I've crocheted two and a half scarfs in the last couple weeks. I even brought my crocheting with me to the office. I felt like the other patients where staring at me, but it kept me busy, I know a few months ago I'd be jealous of that too. And when nurse Chris saw me crocheting she immediately said, "So, the hands are better huh!?"

Now 'bout blog migration. If you were to look at my blogger profile you'd see I have a ton of blogs. And really this is the only one I use. So my plan in the next couple weeks is to migrate content from those blogs to this one and link them together with tags at the bottom of the post. Then I can keep a link on the side-bar to have the topics all together still, but unified under this one blog.

Like with this post, I've been finding I'm doing more of my health blogging here and have ignored the health blog for a while now. Plus I just have been wanting to simplify ever since blogger introduced tags to posts here. Sorry to the less blog savvy people out there. I know I've just totally geeked out on you. Anyway, I don't think there will be too many noticeable changes here, except that my # of posts will increase.

Well, yet again I'm midnight blogging. I had gone to bed about 7 and then got up after 4 hours, I've been doing that tons lately, very frustrating. Anyway I should probably log off the computer, have a light snack and crochet until I'm lulled back to sleep. I just wanted to let everyone know an update.

I still plan on finding Kevin and I a new GP and to find Kevin and ear, nose, throat doctor, and an allergist and naturopath for myself. Anyone got any referrals for one in the Everett, WA area?

I also found this web-cast to be pretty informative in regards to spondylarthropathy. Also, this link was interesting considering I'm set to get an MRI soon.