A New Appreciation For Health

Since I wrote my last post, a lot has happened. By a lot, I mean A LOT. And none of it is good.....

The last thing I wrote about my injury was that I had been forbidden to do anything for three weeks and the doctor thought it was all because of my back being too tight, so he sent me to physical therapy. Well, after a few sessions of PT, we noticed that I was not getting any better. In fact, I was getting worse. The pain was getting more intense, and what really freaked everyone out was when my toes swelled up and turned a bright angry shade of red. My physical therapist tried to find the pulse in my feet and failed. So we went back to the doctor and he said that basically, I am too complicated for the doctors in my town, and he is sending me to the big-city-fancy-pants-hospital to see a big-city-fancy-pants-specialist. He thinks I have an autoimmunity disease. On the long list of diseases I could have, two of his guesses are Lupus and Juvenile Arthritis. Now neither of those are pleasant at all, in fact, I'm going to be blunt here, Lupus is hell. Lupus is a disease where the cells in your body go haywire and start attacking your vital organs. Nobody knows what it's caused by, and there is no cure. It can kill people. Treatments can include medication, steroids, or chemotherapy. If you want to learn more about Lupus, I would suggest watching this.

Juvenile Arthritis is different from the kind of arthritis that old people get, and in ways is worse because it can stunt your bone growth. I can't find a good way to explain it, so I'm going to direct you to this video talking about the kind of arthritis I might have. The doc did mention that I am kind of old for Juvenile Arthritis, but who knows.

I don't really know what else to say right now. The possibility of having either one of these diseases is so horrible that I am kind of numb and emotion-less about it all. I don't know what to think. I am so sick of pain, my muscles keep having cramping spasms, and my hips and lower back hurt so bad that I am having trouble walking. I kind of shuffle and hobble around. Different parts of my body keep swelling, and I don't leave the house unless I have to because of the pain.

I'm not going to talk about dance, or my brown belt test in karate that I missed, or how far behind everyone I'm falling because it will only make me cry. To sum it all up, this sucks, big time.