Something Strange Happened...

Last Saturday when Olivia and I went to Logan with my parents and Ryan something strange happened to me that made me look at life a little bit different. After we went to lunch we were shopping when my hands felt funny, they started to retain a lot of water and my joints in my fingers hurt every time I moved my fingers. Now I know that I have problems with retaining water (which I had a ton of test back in March and we were never really able to totally fix the problem), but the joint stuff was so strange.

Within a couple of hours I was home telling Carson about it when my wrists hurt to move, I couldn't open up sippy cups or doing anything that may cause my wrist to move and then it moved into my ankles and then I had a hard time walking up and downstairs because it was in my knees (actually walking period was difficult), and by the time I went to bed it was going in my neck, the tops of my feet, and the bottom. After waking up the next morning I was more stiff and in more pain every time I tried to move any joint in my body, it even moved into my jaw and all the way up my arms (in my elbows and shoulders). At that point we were debating if my mom should take me to the hospital or not, but I just felt what can they do for me? So the next morning I went out to the Doctor, my hands still swollen and still unable to move much. Truly something that was so scary for me, it was as if I lost all control and muscle in my body. After taking some tests I found out on Tuesday that I had high levels of strep in my body. Your levels are supposed to be in the range 0-99 or 190 (I forgot what they said) and mine was at 400! The test they took showing if I had inflammation in my body also came back elevated, but not enough to say it was a bad arthritis or Lupus-thank goodness! So he put me on a water pill, a mild pain pill, and a cortisone for 6 days (which today is the last day of the cortisone pill).

The hope is the cortisone will clear it up and it will stay away which will say the strep just attacked my body; on the bad side it will not take it away and then I will have to go to a specialist or if it comes back I will get sent straight to a specialist. It took until Thursday to not feel such constant discomfort and pain, so I could move and just do the simple task of opening a sippy cup or using a can opener. I hope and pray that the cortisone didn't just cover up fixing the problem, but that it really took it away. I feel good today and yet at the same time I am a little nervous for this week because I do not want any of those things to come back.

I realized how young I am and how I have a lot more years of needing a healthy body. I realized how much I enjoy bending and straightening my fingers and how I enjoy picking up Olivia with my fingers instead of not holding her or picking her up by my arms. So lots of prayers for a healthy body and a promise to take better care of my body to keep it going strong for many more years!