When You've Been Waiting For Answers And You Finally Get Them

Hello everyone! So for the last year my body has just not been itself. Strangle little things were going on like fevers, severe joint pain, night sweats, swollen lymph nodes, dizziness, extreme fatigue, and on and on. My GP put me on antibiotics which did absolutely nothing and then sent me to an ENT. He took one look at me and said he wouldn't touch me until I was cleared by an oncologist. Let me just tell you that hearing you're being sent to an oncologist is the scariest thing in the entire world. I met with the oncologist who informed me my symptoms were text book lymphoma symptoms (let's clarify that my symptoms match about 10 million things). I went through months of scans and a biopsy to rule out cancer. So that left me in August with no answer still. I went to a Rheumatologist to rule out Lupus and RA where all he could inform me was that he was pretty sure I had an autoimmune disease. For months I sat idle just dealing with everything thinking I wasn't ever going to get an answer for what was wrong with me. Then on March 1st I got strep. Went to the doctor got my antibiotics all was great until three days after I finished my antibiotics and the strep came back. My GP sent me to an infectious disease specialist and that's where I finally found out what was wrong with me!

It turns out I have an autoimmune deficiency which makes it nearly impossible for my body to fight off the simplest of things. It took three rounds of antibiotics, with the last two being through a daily IV, to get rid of the strep. Now I'm looking at biweekly plasma infusions to try and rebuild me immune system. 

 

I had my first IVIG therapy yesterday and it was a long 3 hours. My head is pounding, my arms hurts like you know what where they did the infusion, my stomach isn't a happy camper at all, and I'm so exhausted (which is hard to beat my normal exhaustion levels). I'm not trying to whine but it was just a little more intense than I was expecting. I'm hopeful these will finally help me feel better but I don't want to get my hopes up just yet. I need my body to get its life together and stop attacking itself!! 

So I've been trying to find some funny memes to cheer me up a bit! I'm hoping by Friday or Saturday to return to my normal activity level! I let all of this really affect my weight loss from last March through this past January. I keep telling myself if I was dying or something I was going to eat that damn brownie! Which was all fun and games until I realized this is no excuse to not still focus on my weight loss. I'm only going to feel better the more weight I lose (which let me say isn't actually that true I'm finding but it makes people feel better to tell me that). It gets frustrating when people assume you feel fine because your hair is brushed and you have makeup on. Just because I'm not lying dead on the ground does not mean I feel good. I get tired of saying I hurt or I'm not feeling up to something, that doesn't mean it's not true. So just keep that in mind with anyone dealing with a chronic illness. Just because they're living their lives doesn't mean it's easy for them! 

Thanks for reading!