Hey Spring Break!

Well I am on spring break and couldn't be happier about it. A week to relax. Well, kind of relax because I still need to study for both a chemistry and nutrition exam and I need to study for the GREs which I need to hurry up and take.

I saw the endocrinologist last week and they said they did not think I need one of my parathyroids removed at that time and that the other scary thing they were thinking about is probably not what is going on. I am going to have some specialized tests done on my kidneys to try to figure out why they are so calcified, however. In 6 months I have to repeat the blood tests to check on my levels of calcium and keep doing that every 6 months for a while. If they detect the high calcium again then we have to revisit the surgery issue.

I am really happy about this because I was envisioning ridiculous scars on my neck. And of course surgery just throws everything off and I am tried of having it. While my kidneys still remain a bit of a mystery, and this is scary with lupus, I can deal with it. I have been dealing with the stones in them for many years and while the number of stones keeps increasing, as long as I am not in any acute pain I normally don't think about it.

I am only a couple months away from being a college graduate. My dad keeps asking me how I want to celebrate and I don't really know. It is a little surreal to me. I have not found a job yet and that is making me nervous. I have been in school for so long and being done with it is a little scary.

Well, I am actually nowhere near being done. I plan on going to nursing school in the fall of 2012. But I haven't had an extended period of time not being in school in about 18 years.

I hope everyone is staying well!

Geez, Where Have I Been?

So sorry about the lack of updates. Things this semester have been just as crazy as last semester, if not more so because I am also looking for a job. I haven't had much luck yet but I am hopeful. I am definitely taking at least a year off between undergrad and nursing school so I need something to occupy my time. Also taking up a lot of my time is chemistry. I do not like chemistry.

I am on a slow prednisone taper again to reduce it from when I had my last pleuritis flare up and so far so good. Last time it flared when I got to 5mg which will happen again in a couple of weeks so we will see how that goes. Overall, though, I am feeling pretty good. Just the occasional problem with my joints, especially my knees.

I also joined Weight Watchers! Friday will be the end of my fourth week and I have been losing weight every week except my first. I highly recommend, as I am almost done to my pre-prednisone weight wayyy back in the summer.

I have been thinking a lot about what to call this blog after I graduate. Any suggestions?

First Day of Class...Kind Of

Today was the first day of class for my last semester as an undergraduate. We ended up having a snow day. Or half of a snow day because they did not cancel classes until the afternoon. So I had my nutrition class this morning and stayed and watched the snow fall in the afternoon. I actually kind of wanted to go to my afternoon class because it is called Performance Ethnography and I am not sure what it is about.

Anyway, I was also glad classes were cancelled today because I am fighting a horrible cold which I fear might be turning into an ear infection. Not cool. I have been drinking a lot of tea and taking a lot of Dayquil.

I have seen the syllabi for 5/6 classes and this is getting ready to be another difficult semester. I did not get into the developmental psychology class at the other school like I wanted so I added another class called health communication that I think will look good on nursing school applications.

Stay warm!

Happy New Year

I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday season! I know I sure did. I am also looking forward to this new year. I have not made any real resolutions this year, but I want to continue with my health and weight loss goals.

What does this year have in store for me? The biggest thing is that I will (finally) graduate from college. Five years is enough - I am so ready to be done! I have pretty much decided against going to grad school right away, so not the job hunt begins in earnest.

Health wise, I still have not gotten any answers about my calcium levels. Hopefully this will get sorted out soon.

Once again, happy new year!

Stuffed and Content

Yesterday I tried dim sum for the first time. Here is a wikipedia article about it. It was quite interesting. I'm not sure how much I actually liked, but I am willing to give it another chance. It certainly helped that I was with someone who spoke fluent Cantonese so that I could have some idea about what it was eating. There were a lot of mushrooms involved, which I do not like (it's a fungus!!!!) and I think that contributed to why I did not enjoy it that much. It also could be just the restaurant because I have nothing else to compare it to.

Later, I went out to eat with my dad and some of his friends. We went to a really nice Italian restaurant and the food was really good. I got a dish called chicken Mediterranean which was chicken, pasta, feta cheese, tomatoes and spinach in a lemon sauce. It was so good. The only thing I did not like was that there was no sangria on the menu ;-).

All this eating out stands pretty much against the way I am trying to change my eating habits. I'm all about the home cooked meals, especially as I wage war against prednisone and it's weight-gaining ways. It is so much easier to control what you are eating when you know you prepared it yourself. For example, there is an Au Bon Pain at the hospital that I use. I spent most of the morning and afternoon there on Tuesday and did not feel like paying for parking so my dad went with me to the first appointment and then came back to pick me up after the second. While I was waiting I got some lunch at Au Bon Pain and decided to get their southwestern cornbread for me and my dad. When I got home I looked up the nutritional information of the cornbread and found that it contains 560 calories and 30 grams of fat (!!!). This is over half, and almost all, of the fat that try to eat in one day.

I'm fairly certain that I can make my own cornbread without all the fat and calories. Since I really, really enjoy cooking, I don't mind trying to remake recipes. I'm very happy that restaurants have started to post the caloric content of their menu items because it makes it so much easier when you are eating out. But it also dissuades me from eating out a lot because I can see exactly what I am eating.

Anyway, Merry Christmas Eve to all those who celebrate it!

No Answers, But What Else Is Knew?

I had my appointment with the endocrinologist today and while something being off was definitely noted, what that something may be was not. As I have said before, my calcium levels are high and I have a problem with kidney stones. I currently have a about 4-6 sitting in each kidney and every once in a while it goes acute and causes me a lot of pain. I have never been able to have one of these stones analyzed to find out what they are made of, but with my calcium issues it has always been assumed they are made out of calcium.

The endocrinologists seemed to want to get a better handle on what the stones are made of. Usually when calcium is high, another hormone called the parathyroid hormone will also be abnormal. In my case, the doctor called it "inappropriately normal". This confused them and opens up other possibilities for why my calcium is high. None of which are that good, and none of which I really want to get into right now mainly because it's kind of scary.

The plan for now is to redo the calcium, parathyroid and all of those tests. I'm getting more kidney function tests and some other hormone tests. Then we can make a decision as to whether imaging needs to be done of the parathyroid gland to check for masses and if the doctors need to actually retrieve the stones from my kidneys to verify the stone's composition. Just hearing how the stones would be retrieved made me cringe.

I also saw my endometriosis specialist today and I am reducing my Aygestin. He basically said anytime my prednisone doses are changed around it will interact with my Aygestin and cause the problems I have been having. But since my lungs like to swell up so much, getting off the prednisone is proving kind of difficult.

I'm pretty discouraged. I just want my body to work. There were other alternatives mentioned that are too hard to really think about right now, and my mind is spinning a little bit. It just seems like every time something starts to do right, I fall back into another medical quagmire. And I am getting very sick of it.

Well, That's Done

The semester from HELL is over. I finished my last final at 2:30 Friday and went straight home. It took me three hours to get home because I left just in time for rush hour traffic, but it was good to be home nevertheless.

By my last final, my brain was off. It was for my history of film class and I could barely remember any of the movies we had seen over the semester. Hopefully I did not bomb it too badly.

Now I have a whole month off to do NOTHING and it is so wonderful. I do not really have any plans, but that is fine with me. We got our Christmas tree yesterday so I can finally start getting into the Christmas spirit.

I have a couple of upcoming appointments next week. One with an endocrinologist to see about the issues I have with regulating my calcium and one with my endometriosis specialist for some issues I have been having with it. I also got a call saying that I was scheduled to see surgeon in the endometriosis specialist's office, but no one talked to me about that. I really DO NOT feel like having another surgery for it.

I hope everyone has a good holiday