Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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So much for feeling better

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Ok … so much for that new drug I was trying for my Crohn’s disease.

I started the Sulfasalazine on Saturday – only one pill, four on Sunday and by Sunday evening my face and upper body were red!


It looked like I had either had too much sun or like I was blushing. By Monday I had a strange rash – little red dots over pink to red skin starting on my left lower leg. I stopped taking the medication as soon as I noticed the rash (one pill Monday so six in total) and called the Internist who had prescribed the new anti-inflammatory medication.

By last night the rash on my leg had spread to both legs and my lower torso … ok maybe slightly on my arms as well.

Here’s what it looks like:

skin rash

The picture isn’t the best (that’s my shin), but if you can remember what your skin looks like after you’ve fallen and scraped your leg or some how got rug burn – well that’s what it looks like … not pleasant, but at least it’s not itching or bothering me in anyway other than it’s appearance.

I’m also really really really nauseated and have a headache. I guess that’s normal enough when starting a new medication, but considering I only had one pill yesterday – maybe 32 hours ago, you’d think that the rash, nausea and headache would be starting to die down. I guess it’s going to take a few more days before I feel more like myself again.

Obviously from the name of the drug- Sulfasalazine there’s sulfa drugs in it. We think that’s what I reacted to because the rest of the medication that makes up Sulfasalazine is similar to the Pentasa that I used to take (which only gave me a mild little tiny red dot barely noticeable rash). So I guess I’m allergic or hypersensitive to Sulfa drugs now. I’ve had them in the past – you know, for bladder infections without any problems, but I guess that’s changed.

In other news … I had to call my family doctor today- yet again! Remember I had an ultrasound on my neck two weeks ago that revealed that I have several solid thyroid nodules? I had precancerous tumors in my thyroid in the past so new growths are of great concern to me. Well I finally got my doctor to call me back and she was just going to sit on this and see what happened … duh! You don’t do that when one of the solid nodules is close to 2 cm and a previous history of suspicious growth. Plus my sister had regrowth on her thyroid (she’d had a partial thyroidectomy when she was 18) a few years ago and it was cancer.

I told her that I wanted to see an endocrinologist and supplied her with the name and number for the doctor of my choice. I’m pretty sure he’ll want to at least do a fine needle biopsy of the a few of the growths (any solid nodule over 1 cm should have FNB). Then we can decide from there whether we should just watch the lumps in my throat and see if they grow more (already have swallowing difficulty) or do surgery to remove the rest of my thyroid. Geez I hope that my family doctor doesn’t have any patients with Mesothelioma cancer, she probably just let them sit and wait before sending them to a specialist too!

Yeah, I’m more than a little angry at my family doctors poor care … she’s only done one physical on me in the last five years and has only tested my thyroid levels twice in that time too – not to mention never doing a thyroglobulin which might have picked up on suspicious growths.

Anyway … now I’m going to wait and see when I might have an appointment with the Endocrinologist. Plus I’m going to wait a day or two before I started taking the Pentasa again – i want that rash to mostly disappear before I start putting another drug into my body.

Have you had strange reactions to medications too? I seem to have reactions to about every second new drug I try.





I think someone called the police on me!

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Oops, I think I scared my neighbors!

Just before midnight I went outside with our dog to let her do her final business of the evening. She took her time playing in the odd April snow that we had on Monday and then we headed back to the house.

When I got to the screen door and tried to enter it wouldn’t open! Was it locked? Had my coat sleeve accidentally hit the tiny latch on the screen door handle on the way out?

So there I was standing outside in the cold wondering how I was going to get back into the house. Chris had gone to bed earlier and surely he was asleep. How was I going to get his attention? I mean, it’s not like I could access the inner door … I was standing outside our enclosed front porch so there was three doors between me and the warmth of the house.

Oh boy.

So I started rattling the screen door in it’s frame and calling out Chris’ name. Considering the time I didn’t want to yell too loud, but I had to call out Chris’ name in the hope that he’d hear me, didn’t I?

I’m not sure how long I was out there calling Chris’ name and rattling the screen door, but I don’t think it was any longer than five minutes. Finally Chris appeared at the front door in only his underwear. He couldn’t understand why I wasn’t in the house. I had to rattle the screen door again to show him I couldn’t get into the front porch. He reluctantly came forward and opened the door – he didn’t want to get cold!

I asked him if the door had been locked and he said it wasn’t. I guess the condensation inside the porch must have frozen on the screen doors latch and it quickly froze shut when it closed behind me when I took the dog outside. Funny … that never happened when it was really cold during the winter or, for that matter, ever before!

Once I was inside I started to calm down. I guess I got a little rattled at the thought of being locked (or frozen) out of the house at that time of night.

Once I’d put our Lab Midnight to bed in her crate I happened to notice some car lights outside as I passed the front window. I seemed like the car was parked or idling on the corner, so I parted the curtains and guess what?

It was a police car!

Oops!

I went upstairs to change for bed and told Chris that a police car was in front of our house across the street. As I told him the police car moved forward, did a U-turn and headed back towards the hospital where we both work. There’s almost always police in the Emergency Department so one of them must have taken the call that was so close. Good response time if they were coming for the “disturbance” I was creating.

I’ll bet that one of my neighbors heard me yelling for Chris or rattling the door and called the police. The neighbors in the house adjoining ours might have heard the door rattles and thought someone was trying to break into their home, perhaps. Or maybe someone thought my calls of Chris’ name were really cries for help?

Either way, I’m pretty sure someone close by must have called the cops. Sorry! My bad! < blush >

I think I might just slip the cellphone in my pocket from now on when I go out late at night – just in case something like that happens again!

Strange, isn’t it that the door seemed to freeze closed – I mean, it’s cold out, but not all that bad.

Have you ever been locked out of your house? Or frozen out as in my case?

I need to start using my Wii Fit again

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Do you remember back in January how excited I was when I bought a Wii Fit on eBay?

Once it, and the console that I purchased after the fact since I didn’t know I needed that too finally arrived I used the Wii Fit and played games like Wii Sport bowling and tennis for about two weeks. Unfortunately, at the end of that two week period my Crohn’s got worse and so did my back so I didn’t feel up to using the Wii Fit.

Can you believe that I haven’t used it since then? Even though I’ve purchased four more games to use in the meantime?

Sad isn’t it?

My Crohn’s is still flaring, but overall I feel a little better this week. Oh and my back, probably thanks to the lower back stretching exercises I’ve been doing for the last two to three weeks seems to be getting a lot better. So I think I’m ready to start working out with my Wii Fit again.

I have been getting physical activity in other ways though. I’ve been trying to get out more often to take the dog for long walks. Plus I’ve done about 10 hours of work in the garden this week! Hmmm maybe I should be logging some of this activity into my Wii Fit? There is a way to do that – I just have to remember how, and I think you have to do it on the day you do the none Wii activities as you can’t go backwards in the calendar if you forget.

I’ve also put several hours of work into clearing out the basement so that there will be room for the workmen to work when they replace our oil tank in a week! Sometimes I think it would be easier dealing with our cluttered basement if we just got a truck rental and carted all the stuff we’ve been storing down there to some storage facility … even if it’s only temporary. That won’t work though – I’ve got to go through the stuff and probably throw out half of the stuff we don’t use and probably won’t use.

So back to the Wii Fit … for those of you with a Wii Fit – do you use it regularly? Or did you use it a lot at first and then start to slack off?

I slacked off due to health problems, but I know that if I start to use it regularly I might feel a bit better – or at least my back might as my stomach muscles get stronger again.

Pets and mirrors

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I’ve always loved watching my various pets over the years whenever they happened to discover themselves in the mirrors. Some of them, like my dog Midnight, seem to know that the dog in the mirror is herself, but other pets I’ve had seem to have thought that it was another animal invading their territory! Either way it’s kind of funny to watch!

It looks like this cat discovered itself in the mirror! Kiss, kiss!

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More doctors, new meds and Thyroid nodules

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What an exhausting day!

I had an appointment with a new doctor this afternoon. An Internist. My family doc had suggested I see him over a year ago but delayed referring me until recently. Uh huh … she’s become a dud in the last year or so.

Anyway, I went to see the new doctor, the Internal medicine guy, just to get another set of eyeballs on my Crohn’s case. Nothing has been helping ease my pain and symptoms in the last four years, so as long as I don’t end up having to go through all the tests like yet another colonoscopy, gastroscopy and other tests I’m fine with seeing if this new doctor can help me.

After discussing my medical history and recent symptoms he decided to try me on a different Crohn’s drug. I’m to try it for two weeks and see if I feel any better on the new meds. Of course I probably won’t be able to fill the prescription until the weekend as we go to Costco to fill our scripts these days- it’s cheaper!

I hope this works.

I’m tired though … it’s exhausting seeing a new doc when you have Chronic health problems.

Plus … last week I thought my throat looked a little puffy so when I went to see my pain doctor I had her take a look at my neck and she sent me for an ultrasound. Just as I thought, the right side of my thyroid (the only part of the thyroid I have left since I had the left side removed 19 years ago when I had a tumor with pre-cancerous cells in it!) has lots of solid thyroid nodules in it.

I just got that news yesterday so that’s been worrying me too. I mean, since the last thyroid growths I had had precancerous cells and resulted in surgery I have a feeling that these ones will be precancerous or perhaps even have developed into cancer since my family doc hasn’t been keeping an eye on my thyroid function over the last several years – so I’ll probably end up having surgery to have the rest of my thyroid removed soon too. Biopsies first though …

So now I’m waiting for my family doctor to call me. My pain doctors office, the one who sent me for the thyroid ultrasound, called me yesterday with the results (solid nodules, one more dominant than the others) and said they were faxing the info to my family doctor that day … so why haven’t I heard from my family doctor today? I know she works everyday, but Monday … Grrr … I just want to get started, as in get a referral to an Endocrinologist, and find out how serious these new growths are. Not to mention that I shouldn’t have had new growths since I’ve been on Thyroid replacement therapy for almost 20 years!

The only good news that happened so far today (well other than trying a new medication) is that there was a message on my phone saying that we won a free hotel stay. LOL I’ll have to see if that’s for real or not, but a little good news is nice.

I hope that you had a better and healthier day than I did!

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