Today I woke up at 4:30am to the most awful feeling.
All of my joints minus my jaw it seemed like were screaming at me and wouldn’t stop. I kept on trying to go back to sleep but when my alarm went off at 6 to get up for work, I just went to the bathroom and filled up the tub with the hottest water possible. After 45 minutes of hoping the bath would help I got up, attempted to get ready by hobbling back and forth between my bed an my closet trying to get dressed for work and do my best attempt at makeup with swollen hands. By the time I got downstairs to eat breakfast it was 7:20 and I was still feeling like absolute shit. I hadn’t felt that bad since my last crazy flare up where I had to miss class.
I realized soon when it was 7:45 and I was eating my cereal at a snails pace because my whole body hurt so bad that there was no way that I could drive the 45 minutes to work and then teach for the next hour and a half. I didn’t even think I could turn the ignition in my car. So I called into work and told my boss about my RA and that it had flared up to the point where I couldn’t teach any of my classes in the morning and afternoon. It was a scramble to get my classes covered but luckily everything worked itself out.
This is the first really bad flare that I had been in town for, so I let my boyfriend know how bad it was and he came over and kept me company while I was couch bound for most of the day, watching movies like Bruce Almighty and eating some good food.
I’m really glad that he was here and that he could finally see first hand what that experience is like. He also saw how I had to demon dial my rheumatologist’s office to get an answer back on what they could do for me.
I first called their main office, told the medical staff member what was going on, she only asked for my name and date of birth and told me that the doctor would call me back. Three hours later I called the location that I had been to two weeks earlier, spoke to a staff member. She asked for my name, date of birth, diagnosis, symptom history, and what I had tried already. She also saw that I hadn’t heard back on my blood results yet and told me that she would get the doctor to tell me what was up with those.
She called me back about an hour later telling me that the doctor said that my blood tests were fine but he didn’t really give a straight answer on what to do next with my pain level and that she “wasn’t really happy with his response” so she sent him another message. 15 minutes later I got a call back that they want to double my daily prednisone from 5 to 10mg a day for the next 3 days and then drop it back down to 5 until my next appointment on the 2nd.
So hopefully this prednisone works because I hated missing out on teaching my kiddos today and I don’t want to do that to another group tomorrow. And also the pain sucks ass too.
