The Scleroderma Chronicles: July Report

If there is one true thing about scleroderma, it is that it never stays the same. I think of it like the weather or road conditions; as soon as you think you’ve figured out what to wear or the best route to drive to work, things change.  If you are dealing with scleroderma in your life, you just learn to roll with the punches. One day you feel fine, and the next one you have brain fog, your knees won’t bend, and gastritis has come to call. One night my hair just started falling out and strands began snowing down onto my shoulders and arms. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry…

Ugh. This is scleroderma. Bad days come and go, plans shift, and life goes on.

Here’s the deal: I’m doing much better! I’m having a lot of good days!! After months of struggling my doctors and I realized that I needed to go off some of my meds because I was getting much better! My lung volume has increased, my heart is looking normal, and my blood pressure is down. Bam! Time to start getting some exercise, don’t you think? I bought a Fitbit and slowly began to increase my daily steps until I could do 5,000 steps every day. Then I began to increase my active minutes and now, at the end of July, I am logging 3 days of exercise a week. This is huge, huge, huge!! Yay, Fitbit!!

If you slogged through any of my June posts (Science and the Scleroderma Girl) you know that I maintain a log of my symptoms, diet, and other data that occurs to me. (Yep. Weather fronts do make it harder for me to breathe. Who would have suspected that! Thank you log book!) This month I added bananas to my diet to see if they would help reduce muscle pain. I think they’re helping, and getting exercise probably helps too. Yay, bananas!

When I bought this oil on Amazon I noticed in the comments by other customers that they used it on their scalps to help hair grow. Who knew? Maybe that is a thing, I thought. I checked in the scleroderma online forums and decided to oil my scalp once a week. Now, at the end of July, I am happy to report that my hair seems to be growing back. Yay, castor oil!!

Today was the last day of July. It was a pretty good month for me and my scleroderma. There were some definite bumps during the month, but over all the patient scientist approach to managing my trio of autoimmune diseases is paying off for me. Exercise, bananas, and castor oil were big positives for the month. The negatives were discovering that I can’t have any sunshine on my skin, and I absolutely can’t cut down on the stomach acid reducer med. Oh, well, even negative results are good to know.

Yesterday I bought a new data notebook. I have some ideas about some new stuff to experiment with…

Science and the Scleroderma Girl rides again.

Bring it on, August!

Author: Midnight Knitter

I weave, knit and read in Aurora, Colorado where my garden lives. I have 2 sons, a knitting daughter-in-law, a grandson and two exceptionally spoiled kittens. In 2014 I was diagnosed with a serious rare autoimmune disease called systemic sclerosis along with Sjogren's Disease and fibromyalgia. View all posts by Midnight Knitter