Oh Keah, thank you so much for responding to my post. How are you doing these days. I have not been around in a long time, I had to take a break. about the last I remembered with you is your dr finally took you off of work. Did you file for SSD yet? If not, please do so. At that time you were doing really poorly and I believe you were in the middle of a change in drs. You had been playing the sick game of one dr says you have this and the other says no you don't. Why do they do that.Gosh, they have such huge egos that gets in the way of everything, including their thinking.
I have changed my PCP drs and I think I made the right decision. This gal is very thorough to say the least. She does not mess around either. She orders the tests and if something shows up off to the specialist you go. Whether she does any testing or not she firmly believes in covering all the squares on the board. You know for 2 yrs now I have had trouble with my legs swelling really bad, the skin would break open & weep, then the sores did not want to heal. I would also get a fever in my legs and after the fever & heat went away the skin would peel as if I had a sunburn. She sent me to a vascular surgeon, I had already done a doppler on the legs to rule out a blood clot, and then she did a doppler on the carotid's and I have 50% blockage. She says they don't do any surgery until you are like 75% blocked. The vascular dr will see me every 6 months to monitor things. They agreed I should wear the compression hose. I did in deed buy them and they do make your legs feel so much better.They help keep the swelling down and if they are swollen usually within a few days they start going down.
Her next thing in her bag of goodies was to repeat my ANA since the one in Jan came back a high positive. In addition she ordered several other tests with the blood which helped rule out some things too. She is a pretty smart lady.So, after the new labs came back and were higher than in Jan she has ref me to a rheummy. I see him Oct 2, I believe. My blood work and tests are either Lupus or MCTD and she is really leaning more towards the latter of the two. I have far more symptoms pointing to MCTD than Lupus. But, we will wait and see what this rheummy thinks. I read a little at the Mayo Clinic on it, not much really posted that I could find on MCTD. I saw one of the treaments is Prednisone, well that one is out for me, no roids of any kind. My pulmonary dr does not get flustered because I cannot have steroids. I am on the oxygen 24/7 and numerous meds for lungs. Its nice not to be falling every time I turn around. I just was not getting enough air and I would pass out and hit the floor or stairs. I fell twice down the stairs in the house. How I kept from hurting myself badly and not break bones is a miracle.
Please post and let me know how you are doing. I really miss alot of the ole regulars on here. Hugs, Susie