birthdays, doctors and chi-town

that's what we have been up to lately! i haven't been able to write in a while because things have been so crazy around here. first was the 4th of july - it was a fun day. we went to my parents to watch the neighborhood parade and then came home and got ready to take the boat out on the lake. it was a hot, sunny day and we met up with some friends out there and swam and drank malibu with cranberry. we went in that evening and ate hamburgers and hotdogs at my parent's house and then went back out on the boat with them to watch the fireworks. i love the 4th of july! the next day was the first grader's birthday party - a luau. it was a lot of fun but it was also a lot of work since it was at our house and we had 18 kids here (plus parents)! i was expecting up to 25 kids!! the next day was the first grader's actual birthday and i had to spend most of the day packing, but that evening we went to my parent's house and they had a fish fry (yum)! i'm so glad that i've trained both of my kids to pick fried fish as their favorite birthday dinner too - now we get it at least four times each year! :-) that next morning we got up and got ready to go to the airport and began our excursion to chicago. we all four had a carry-on, two bags to check and a carseat plus two children that are pokey and wander around as they walk. we also had to switch planes in memphis. which fyi - that airport sucks (it was small, old and crowded)! we finally got there tuesday evening and were exhausted but excited to be there. my brother didn't have to work the whole time we were there and his wife only had to work that first day so we had a lot of time to play tourist with our own "personal guides" and get in lots of visiting. it was really fun! we went to the children's museum, the navy pier, the lincoln park zoo, the beach at lake michigan, shopping on michigan avenue, catching fireflies at night, walked to get ice cream, to see the bean and other attractions at millennium park, to the local pool, to see wrigley field and the guys went to a nascar race. all of that in four days - and we even had to time to just chill at the house and have dinner and drink (wine for us ladies and beer for the guys from my brother's keg that he has on tap)! it's amazing i even got my hubby to leave that keg! :-) while all of this is going on i have been in a lot of pain (see post about medical ailments)! i went to the first of my doctors appointments a couple of days before the 4th of july and then the week after we returned from chicago, i went to doctor's appointments three days. i guess it's no wonder my house is a wreck and we haven't written any thank you notes yet!

hallelujah - i feel almost human again!!

for the last four to six weeks, i have been feeling like hell! it started out innocently enough with my ankles hurting towards the end of the day and i just figured it was from being on my feet too much and wearing flip-flops everyday. it progressively got worse and my knees started hurting too and i started having a cough (but no other cold symptoms). the only thing that helped was to take advil and i was taking it every 4 hours (like clockwork). after about a week to 10 days straight of doing this, i figured that's probably not good so i went to my doctor. she gave me some celebrex (to take instead of the advil) and ran some blood tests. when she called me back she told me that my sed rate (which gives an idea of the inflammation going on in your body) was 86 and it should never be higher than 20! she said she would refer me to a specialist and i should keep taking the celebrex. by this time, every joint is hurting and i'm coughing worse than any smoker you have ever heard. when i woke up in the morning (before taking my medicine) was the worst. i was useless for at least an hour - could barely walk and coughing so bad that i would nearly throw up and could hardly catch my breath to even breathe! it was horrible and the celebrex does not last a full 24 hours like it's supposed to - i'm lucky if i could get a good 8-10 hours out of it! this is the same time that our family is on vacation in chicago. when we got home i found out that the rheumatologist that i was referred to couldn't see me until august 25th!! on tuesday i called to see if i could get in any sooner and they said "can you be here at 1:00?" i hustled like crazy and spent the whole afternoon there seeing the doctors, giving 9 tubes of blood, and getting 16 x-rays (on my hands, wrists, feet, ankles and chest). without knowing any test results, the doctor was leaning towards RA (rheumatoid arthritis) which would not be good, but at least we would know what we are dealing with. well, he called thursday with the results and told me that "something is definitely off". yeah, no kidding - i never went to medical school and i could have told you that!! he says he doesn't think it is RA but he doesn't really know what it is. the antinuclear antibody test was positive and the chest x-ray showed interstitial inflammation in my lungs, but the x-rays of my hands and feet looked fine. he started me on a low dose of steroids yesterday and i'm feeling so much better already! i wish i knew what was causing my problems but at least i'm able to function now (i couldn't even make breakfast for my kids, run errands, work out, clean house, etc.). today, i hardly have any joint pain and i still have the cough but it is not as bad as it was. i'm not 100% yet but at least i'm feeling human again!!