Rough Start

      2014…I’m hoping all of you will have a fantastic year, a better, more positive, and more healthy year than 2013 was! Being a little tired of all the medical trials we endured during the past year,we were hopeful to be off to a good start. It turned out different though.

      All is better now but my husband started the year off with a nasty pneumonia, was admitted to the hospital for five days and stayed home for 9 more after that. It seems he is on the mend now, but it was a stubborn bug that hit hard.

     Not just health wise, Mother Nature  is also not helping out! We have had more snow in just December than we usually have in a whole winter. We've had extreme cold temperatures and crazy winds, where semi trucks were blown off the highways. The crazy amount of snow has caused many barns to collapse, what is a big catastrophe for our local farming community. We've had above zero temperatures where the snow starts to melt and freezes up overnight, to create ice rinks in our yards and on our roads. Wicked weather. But: we do see a bit more sunlight already and we are nearing the end of January, so there is light at the end of the winter tunnel!

it sure is pretty though!

     Today was another day of driving to Calgary, to have my girl and my boy checked out. Luckily this was one of the very beautiful days so the driving conditions were great. It almost felt like spring was in the air!

     My daughter’s joints were clean, Hooray! She has been having back pain lately and the doc did some further exploration as to what may cause that. Since she has a leg length difference from about a centimeter, chances are her hips are slightly tilted or she may compensate it with the posture of her spine, this can cause back problems .An insole to correct the difference is prescribed, we will go and hunt for that at some point in time!  When the doc was examining her back, she also found there was a curve in her spine: scoliosis. It is a very mild curve and usually scoliosis does not cause back pain, but it definitely is something we need to keep an eye on. Also a question my daughter had was if she had developed an intolerance to dairy, the fatty dairy in particular; creams, ice cream, whipped cream etc. because she can have severe cramps after she has eaten it. The doc is investigating this further and is also wondering if she maybe has developed celiac. Blood work ordered and done and also x-rays ordered and done to finish off her appointment!

     My Son….he’s not quite there yet. He’s been on Humira now for 4 months, plus on prednisone, MTX, Naprosen, sulfasalasine, folic acid ; the works. There is no improvement in his finger joints and that is a bit worrisome. The treatment has been aggressive and we should have at least seen some improvement. So now it’s time to bring in the big guns. The doc had a couple of scenarios and this is what we chose to do first: do joint injections* in all his affected joints (more than 10), give it two months and we will evaluate after these two months if we see enough improvements. If not, we need to move on to another biologic, she mentioned two, and both of them would be monthly infusions.  Since he has so many joints that need to be injected they will put him under general anesthetics, so he will be out completely!  So…blood work ordered and done and x-rays ordered and done to finish off his appointment!

     After that mommy, boy child and girl child were all hungry and in need of some shopping therapy! Red basketball shoes, a Pink hoody, and a grey winter coat were purchased; I’ll leave it up to you to figure out who got what!

red, pink , and grey

*Joint injections are injections done in the inflamed joint, where fluid is retracted and medication is injected.