I saw my rheumy yesterday, and he suggested that since I've been cleared of the latent tb treatment, that I can go back on enbrel if I wanted to. I told him I wanted to think about
it because a pulmonologist I saw last year told me he wouldn't take enbrel and mtx together because of the risk of infection. Rheumy said that was a bunch of bunk--while enbrel certainly does raise the risk of infection, adding mtx does not increase the risk any further. I may just give it a try because it did work 100% before (last year), but then I did catch some really weird lung infection that no one seems to know anything about
it (hence the tb treatment--though I'm pretty sure the infection I had was NOT tb).
Also asked rheumy about other things that can cause apical lung scarring (one of my findings) because my dad recently told me that my mom had that too. At first glance, doctors typically chalk it up to an old healed tb infection, but since neither my mother nor me can think of where we might have even been exposed to tb, and my mother went on to develop interstitial lung disease (which is what killed her in 2000), I'm a bit concerned. He said most likely me and my mom were exposed to the same source of tb? I don't have any lung symptoms other than a lot of chest congestion when it gets really humid outside--pulmonary function test was better than 100%. I'm probably worried about nothing, but wouldn't you be a bit freaked if you found out you had the same lung scarring that your mother had, and she ended up developing interstitial lung disease?
In any case, that's what happening now. If I started developing more lung symptoms I might be a bit more proactive. For now, I'm not going to worry about things beyond my control.
I hope everyone's well--I know I've don't post often anymore. But it doesn't mean I'm not thinking of everyone here.
Elcamino