Scleroderma – Page 11 – Yarn, Books & Roses

Science and the Scleroderma Girl: Controlled Experiments

I literally learned about controlled experiments at my mother’s knee; there was a new baby in the house, and she was slowly introducing solid foods into his diet and I was helping to feed him. She carefully added only one new food a week: applesauce, carrots, squash… it was boring and I wanted to give him lots of interesting foods all at once. Nope. She insisted that it was important to keep everything exactly the same EXCEPT for the new food that was being introduced; if the baby got sick then we would know that the new food was the cause. Bam! This is an explanation of controlled experiments that even my five year old self could understand.

Upset cat — The Mother of Cats was raised by a very smart woman…

As a person with a chronic illness I hang out in internet forums and support groups that are awash with lots of confusing and conflicting information. It is a lot to sort through, and I find myself searching for validating information generated by that method I first learned from my mom: results from controlled scientific studies.

This is what I’m looking for when I deep dive into the internet looking for results on medications, alternative medicine treatments, supplements, exercise, possible causes of my illness, whatever.

Who did this research? Is it being presented by someone with a financial stake in the results? For example, research showing that cigarettes had no impact on cancer rates funded by the tobacco industry was later shown to not be valid. There was research bias in the tobacco-funded research. I look for bias like that as I collect information.
Did this research study have a control group? This means that if a group of patients received a drug, was there another matched group that did not get the drug; the two groups should be compared to see if the drug impacted their illness.
How well matched were the two groups? Ideally, they should be as identical as possible. The groups should have patients of the same ages, genders, diagnoses, etc.
What was the data that was being collected? I feel that hard data like lung volume, CAT scans, arterial pressure or blood tests are more meaningful than a survey filled out by patients that reports how “bad” they feel.
How large were the research groups? A study done with only a dozen patients is not necessarily invalid, but one done with a couple of hundred patients is one whose results I’m more likely to regard as meaningful.
The gold standard in research studies is one that assigns one group the drug, and the other group a placebo (an inactive dose) as the control. The patients and the doctors do no know which patients are receiving the drug, and which are getting placebo. This type of study, a double blind, is considered the most reliable as bias has been removed: differences between the two groups is due only to the drug.

This is a lot to keep in mind when looking at research reports, but after a while it gets easier. I used to hunt for newspaper reports of medical research to use with my classes. One of the favorites was this study about a virus that causes obesity…

Mice used in medical research studies are genetically identical. In the fat virus study animals were kept in identical conditions and one group was infected with the virus, and the other was not. The fat boy got the virus. (okay, this picture was swiped off the internet… I have no idea what actually happened to these two particular mice, but you get the idea…)

I don’t have the article from the Denver Post anymore, but here is the same study described on WebMD. The research, done by Richard Atkinson, M.D., showed that animals infected with the Ad36 virus have a huge weight gain even though they were eating the same amount as the control group. It happened in any animal group exposed to the Ad36 virus: mice, rats, chickens, monkeys. When he checked the blood of humans for antibodies to Ad36, he discovered that 30% of humans had antibodies to the virus, and those people were significantly heavier than people without the antibodies. Here’s the breakdown of the experiment:

Virus exposed mice: experimental group
Mice not exposed to the virus: control group
Conditions kept constant: the students could like several like age, type of mouse, genders, food, cage size, etc.
Data collected: weight gain

My students could also come up with the hypothesis and make predictions for further experiments. It was always interesting to me that many students would insist that obesity was just the result of poor diet and lack of exercise and that this data couldn’t be true. That’s bias, I would tell them. You have to follow the data; these results don’t mean that diet and exercise aren’t important, but you can’t just dismiss them out of hand, especially since it was validated using several animal models…

This is the type of thinking that I try to cling to as I hunt for information that might help me handle my chronic condition. Will essential oils help? Which ones? What is this whole AP protocol? Is sugar inflammatory? What about dairy? Is CellCept better than methotrexate in the long run? What is the best treatment for PAH? Should I go to yoga class? What studies have been done, and what does the data say? Learn, learn, learn.

My best survival skill is now the one that I learned at my mother’s knee.

Science and the Scleroderma Girl: Hard Choices

Everything happened really fast when I was first diagnosed with scleroderma and Sjogren’s Syndrome. I had been referred to the rheumatologist after the results of bloodwork that my PCP ordered up. The rheumatologist did an exam and some tests, told me that I had the form of scleroderma called limited systemic sclerosis, and was evasive when I asked him what this would mean for me in the long term. What would my life be like in five years, I asked. He said he needed to run some more tests and would get back to me. He also told me to stay off the internet.

Well, that was kind of ominous, don’t you think? My first clue that this might be rather serious…

I was given a prescription for a disease modifying drug (DMARD) called Plaquenil, a handful of pamphlets, and referrals for additional testing. Lots of testing. Waiting for my prescriptions to be filled I went to the lab to get blood drawn and then sat down to call to make appointment for the additional testing I needed. It was hard to not feel like the sky was crashing down on me.

Cinco de Mayo rose. — Hey, time for a rose break. Look at what is blooming in my garden this morning!

After 6 months of the drug Plaquenil I was feeling better, so I was a little shocked when the rheumatologist told me that it was time to add additional drugs and that he was going to give me the choice of methotrexate or CellCept. He handed me information on the drugs, ordered more blood tests to determine the state of my liver, and told me to call back in a week to let him know which drug I was comfortable with.

Of course I went straight to the internet. Hello. Science girl here. How should I make a decision without more information? Time to put all that chemistry and molecular biology to work!!

Ugh. After researching both of these drugs it didn’t look too good to me. Methotrexate is actually a chemo drug, given in a lower dose to rheumatology patients to suppress the immune response. I would need folic acid to try to minimize hair loss and other side effects, and it would knock me on my butt for a day or two each week. CellCept also suppressed the immune system by another pathway, had fewer side effects, more risk of cancer, and was really hard on the stomach. Both drugs had definite downsides. I would need to stay out of the sun to prevent DNA damage. My risk of serious infections, including PML, a fatal brain infection, would go up. The side effects of methotrexate seemed to be worse to me, but the CellCept would be awful on my gastritis…

If I chose to remain untreated with either of these drugs my chance of developing a fatal complication from scleroderma went up. I was already in the early stages of interstitial lung disease and pulmonary arterial hypertension, both of which could be fatal, so I really did need to try to slow things down with a drug…

Ugh! I was feeling pretty helpless about making the decision. What should I do when the future was unknown? Everything was a gamble and I didn’t have any really good choices.

I called my rheumatologist and told him I wanted to try methotrexate because I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to handle CellCept. It was done.

Jacob sheep — Science and the Scleroderma Girl will be taking the weekend off because tomorrow I am going to the Estes Park Wool Market with my BKB Deb. Any day in the mountains is a good day, but it will be even better with yarn, peeps, and cute sheep. Woohoo! Fiber festival time!!

This whole process was kind of awful. Just knowing how these drugs worked and their side effects wasn’t enough. I needed more info. I needed to hunt down research studies.

Science time!!

Science and the Scleroderma Girl: The Patient Scientist

It is really annoying to have an illness that just keeps going on and on and on… think of the energizer bunny here. A really annoying scleroderma energizer bunny. I am so over it already. I love my doctors, but they are really focused on slowing down the progression of my bad boy illness, systemic sclerosis, and are kind of dismissive of the pain and dizziness that is coming my way courtesy of the fibromyalgia and Sjogren’s Syndrome.

It isn’t that they don’t care. They just have clearly defined priorities in mind as they treat me. It is kind of like when my mom was going through chemo for her cancer. The doctors were very sympathetic about her struggles with nausea and fatigue, and helped her the best they could, but they did not let up on the chemo schedule. My doctors are also sympathetic, but they still took my immunosuppressant dose up as high as they could when I got into trouble with my lungs two years ago. Oh, you are having trouble sleeping? So sorry. Hang in there. It will get better…

Cat and computer. — Do you see how much help MacKenzie is giving me while writing this? He too is sympathetic. Oh, your legs are hurting today? Here, I’ll sleep on top of them for you…

I had a surge of rebellion about the same time that this was going on and decided that I would consider myself a walking experiment of one and would try to get a better handle of my symptoms; surely there must be correlations between what I was doing in my day and how I felt. If I understood my test results better perhaps I could have better conversations with my doctors. Stop being a victim, I told myself, and become a patient scientist!

The food log was perhaps the most important thing that I did. I began to figure out lots of things by focusing on what I was eating and what my symptoms were. I ignored the “universal truths” that I was being told to me by other people and focused on what was happening with me. Bam! Some of the things that I figured out actually changed the diagnosis list on my chart, and I certainly improved the quality of my life. Here is the short list of what I discovered about myself: absolutely NO SALT or other forms of sodium, gluten is fine, fiber is a problem, lactose free dairy with live cultures is a daily must, bananas are boss, and I should eat foods with a low glycemic index. Oh yeah: vitamin D and krill oil supplements are good, but tart cherry supplements will damage my kidneys. Good to know.

What happened when I changed my diet? Muscles pain went way down, I got more energy, my gastritis and other GI symptoms improved greatly, I slept better, and the quality of my life improved. For each of those food choices I used myself as an experimental animal. Just one change was made in my diet, and then I tracked symptoms for a week or two to see what happened. My latest experiment has involved bananas; a banana a day keeps my muscle pain way down. Who knew? Have a headache? Eat raisins!

I began to gather other types of data. I took my blood pressure during times when I was feeling poorly to see what it was doing. That’s how I figured out that my inhaler was making my blood pressure drop. Now that I’m off my blood pressure medicine, my pressure is back up, and I’m using my inhaler safely every day. Today I noticed that I was a little short of breath while doing laundry…

Oxygen monitor — Oh. That blood oxygen level is a little two low. It was in the high 80s when I first checked, and was up to 91% by the time I snapped the picture.

Now that I’m using the inhaler daily my energy level is up in my little notebook. Hmm… I’m not sure if this is completely due to the inhaler as I also added bananas to my diet, but as I keep logging observations I may figure it out.

I also have started collecting all the data that I can get from my routine heart and lung testing. I usually get a phone call from the doctor that tells me how I’m doing, but with the data in hand I can have more meaningful conversations with my doctors.

PFT results. — This is some data from pulmonary function tests that were done 2 years apart.

The data that I have circled in the upper table of data shows that my lung volume didn’t change very much when administered a dose of albuterol during my first pulmonary function test, which was done right after I was diagnosed. Two years later, when I was really struggling with shortness of breath, the data in the lower table showed that I improved 16% in my lung volume after that same drug. The technician told me that this was a big response and that he was sure I would be prescribed a drug to help me; that didn’t happen until I made an appointment with my internist weeks later, told her about my response on the drug, and showed her the specific data that I had picked up from the hospital where the test was done. Bam!! I got the inhaler that day.

By collecting data at home and paying attention to my symptoms I’ve been able to give better information to my doctors who have responded with changes in my drug protocol and treatment focus. Today all of my doctors shoot me a full copy of all of my testing data as soon as they get it. I also can access data through the patient portal at Kaiser. I follow changes in data over time, and then I can have a meaningful discussion with my physicians when I see them.

I’m just one data point out of all of the patients that my doctors treat, but by using myself as a walking experiment of one I’ve been able to figure out management strategies to help myself and how to better communicate with my medical team to work with them as a collaborative partner.

This is good. I will never be in control of my illnesses, but I sure am poking them with the pitchfork.

Err… knitting needles. They have definitely been poked.

It is good to be a science geek.

Science and the Scleroderma Girl: The Nature of Science

Logic clearly dictates…

Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn

Science. Everyone knows what science is, right? I mean, we have all been exposed to courses in science that involved learning lots of stuff about rocks, atoms, moving objects, plants, furry animals and stars. There are all of those books and all those facts, equations, and laws to learn. The vocabulary is ridiculous!

Science is also a way of thinking that allows us to learn new information about the world around us. It is a system of reason and logic that helps us understand what we know, and why we know it. Every year I started the biology course with a little unit called “The Nature of Science”, and this is what it covered:

Science is used to explore the natural, physical world around us. The magical and supernatural spheres are definitely off limits. The reason why is…
Science requires that we be able to collect data about a phenomenon we are studying: it must be observable with our senses or instruments. Something may be real, but if we can’t observe it we can’t study it using the rules of science.
In science you cannot whip out a miracle to make your model work…
The data that is collected should be consistent over time. Think about ghost research; instruments that show the presence of ghosts work on some occasions and not on others. That data isn’t reliable because it isn’t consistent. If I drop a glass it will fall to the floor every time, and it will accelerate towards the floor at the same rate every time I drop it. That data is reliable.
It should be possible to make predictions based on observations and prior understandings. We generally call these predictions hypothesis, and they get tested all the time in…
Experiments! The way we expand our understanding of the natural world is through experimentation that tests these predictive hypotheses. Observable data is collected during the experiment that allows us to draw some conclusions about whether the hypothesis was correct or false. Either way is fine. The point here is, we should be able to test the hypothesis to see if the prediction was accurate.
Here is the best part of science: based on what new understandings are generated our predictive models should be able to be adjusted. NOTHING is forever in science when you are dealing with the big predictive models that we call theories. For example, when I was a child I was told that mountains were formed as the earth cooled and wrinkles formed on the planet “like a raisin”. Ugh! Can you believe I was taught that?! Our current understanding of mountain formation involves the movement of large plates in the earth’s crust (plate tectonics), which actually makes more sense as it also explains earthquakes and volcanoes. Is my heart set on plate tectonics? Nope. If some new information emerges that supports an expanded or new model of mountain formation, I have to follow the data. That’s why theories are said to be “supported” by evidence, but never proven.

Science is about using logic and reason to learn new things about the world. Logical safeguards are in place to help make sure conclusions are valid (you know about some of these… I’m talking about controlled experiments, reproducible results, and peer review of published experimental results). Science is actually a form of applied philosophy; early scientists were called “natural philosophers” and today the degree is still called a Doctor of Philosophy. Yep. That’s what Ph.D. stands for.

Why is this stuff important to me and anyone else with an autoimmune disease? Unhappily, we are out there on the edge of the envelope, falling off the map, and beyond solid scientific understandings. We have diseases that developed via unknown pathways and causes, and they are not completely understood. There is no definitive treatment that will “cure” the disease. We are part of a continuing effort to expand scientific and medical knowledge as we progress through our illnesses using drugs and interventions that are the best predictions for good outcomes. We are all walking hypotheses, and what happens to us helps build the body of evidence on how effective our treatments were. As knowledge expands in labs about the biological pathways and the disease mechanisms, new treatments will be developed, they will also be subjected to this scientific process, and the total body of scientific understandings will grow. Someday it will all be “old stuff” and written in a dusty book.

But today, I’m rocking the edge of the envelope as a walking experiment of one.

I even keep a science notebook on myself.

That’s tomorrow’s post.

Science and the Scleroderma Girl: A Series of Serendipitous Events

Serendipity: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.

Pincushion Flower. — This morning, while weeding the back wilderness, I found this transplant. Serendipity in the garden.

I can clearly remember the first event of historical significance that invaded my simple world of early childhood. I had been snuck into the big kids playground at our school by my rule-breaking older sister. Swinging on a high bar way too high for my little First Grade body, I listened to my sister and her friends talk about Sputnik; a scary object launched by the Russians orbiting the earth above me. I couldn’t see it, but evidently it could be followed because it was talking to the ground with radio signals.

Just like that I was gone. The world was round, there were things that happened in the world that I couldn’t see, but evidence could be collected that betrayed their presence. I was a science geek in that instant, and it never ever stopped for me.

Sputnik, and the ensuing space race, made money available for science education in the public schools. I was exactly the right age to benefit from this new emphasis on understanding the world around us through scientific thought. I was a curious child: I questioned everything, collected bugs, nursed baby birds back to health, begged for a microscope for Christmas (which I got), and read endless books.

Years later, married to a young serviceman in the navy, I ended up applying to the university near where he was stationed to study biology. That is how I ended up working towards a degree in molecular biology at UCSD. My professors were famous scientists and I was so lucky to learn from them. Stanley Miller taught me physical chemistry, and I learned immunology from Seymour Jonathan Singer. Ok, I took that immunology class from Dr. Singer because he was my advisor, and I was kind of scared of him. I couldn’t say no when he pressed me to enroll.

Because I had immunology under my belt I was hired at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation to work in the lab of Dr. Eng Tan, who conducted research that focused on the molecules in a cell’s nucleus that were the targets of the antibodies found in patients with rheumatic conditions such as lupus and, wait for it, SCLERODERMA. Yep. My first job in that lab was doing the ANA tests. Later on I was part of the research team that identified SCL-70, one of the molecules involved in the diffuse form of systemic sclerosis. Here’s the paper if you want to torture yourself. 🙂

I have to say, I loved working in research, but it wasn’t as creative and social as I needed my work day to be. I went back to school, got a teaching certification, and began to teach biology and AP Biology. Whew. I had to take lots of classes to stay up on things, and along the way I learned lots about human anatomy and physiology. Just as I was working into my comfort zone education transformed and educational standards were instituted. Good grief. Why do I have to keep on stretching my wings like this?

I had to teach students how to think and plan experiments just as scientists did in my classroom. I created lots of open-ended research problems that they could investigate, collect data on, and then draw conclusions that I could use to link to biological concepts that they were learning about. Wailing internally at the extra work, I began using science notebooks in my classrooms.

Students doing experiment. — In this lab the students grew yeast in different conditions and then collected the amount of CO2 gas that they produced as a measure of growth in the attached balloons. These students were varying the amount of sugar the yeast had.

Graph of experiment. — Here’s the graph from a student team that varied the growth temperature. Those yeast sure liked water that was 60 degrees Centigrade!

The kids liked the experiments, their ability to think scientifically grew by leaps and bounds, and along the way I really learned a lot of things myself. I ended up training other teachers on how to do science notebooking in their own classrooms, and eventually I helped write the inquiry science standards for my state.

Four years ago symptoms that I had been dealing with for years (and decades) overwhelmed me and I was diagnosed with a couple of the autoimmune diseases that I had learned about early in my professional life. Unbelievably, through no real choices of my own, I had been prepared with the background knowledge, resources, and experience that I needed for the fight.

Serendipity.

This is Science and the Scleroderma Girl, the mini-series project of blog posts about the adventures of a science geek in the world of chronic illness. June is Scleroderma Awareness Month, so I hope to put up a new post each day. I hope you’ll join me.

It’s June! Introducing Science and the Scleroderma Girl.

Okay, this is it. I’ve been fussing for over a year about writing a series about science, biology, medical decisions, and navigating safely through a world of alternative medicine and treatments. I’ve come close to launching into a block of mini-rants before, but never went there because it would just take too much energy…

June is Scleroderma Awareness Month. As luck would have it, June has also arrived as I sail back into calm waters following a 6 week storm set off by worsening symptoms, medical testing, and finally a collaborative consensus between my doctors and myself based on data that informs a new course of treatment. In other words, science, biology, and data-driven medical decisions have saved the day. I have lived a life of science in my educational and professional life and this training and way of thinking continues to save the day for me. I do have other skills, of course, but the foundation is always based in science.

I guess I think that it is time for me to share in case it helps anyone else.

Hot Cocoa Rose. — June has brought me the first rose of summer, too. Look at this cutie!

This month I am better. This month my energy is coming back, ideas for topics are swirling in my head, and I think that the time has come. I’ve started a planning grid with all of my topics and resources, and things are starting to come together. Since June is Scleroderma Awareness Month, this is the month that I should do this. If I can put this all together, there will be a post each day this month. With Star Trek quotes, of course!

I did tell you I was a science geek, didn’t I?

The Scleroderma Chronicles: I’ll take a side of fibromyalgia with that…

My poor physician team. I come to see them with a whole host of complaints at every appointment. I can see then mentally sorting the symptoms into piles as I talk :

important, needs to be investigated immediately.
sad, but part of the life of a patient with this chronic condition.
these are issues that should be passed on to another member of the treatment team.
irrelevant to the current diagnosis.

For three years I’ve been mentioning my muscle problems. My muscles are sore to the touch, and they just burn sometimes. The burning can go on for days, and I do get a little cranky; okay, maybe some wailing has occurred. Poor cats! It is really painful at connection points around joints. Stamina is poor, and I’m exhausted all the time.

Yellow cat. — I dragged a cat pillar into the bedroom for the cats to sleep on as it too hard to have them in bed with me. There are days when a cat paw on my leg is more than I can handle.

Some of these symptoms can be explained as being part of the whole scleroderma thing. Muscle issues are rampant with scleroderma as some of the necessary enzymes for muscle movement are too low for reasons that aren’t clear to me. My rheumatologist has checked for polymyositis and other serious muscle problems, but my muscle strength is good and my test results have been normal. I’m in pain, but my muscles aren’t being damaged. I have been just managing with heat pads and knitting as there seemed to be nothing that could be done. To make things worse I can’t have anti-inflammatory drugs or painkillers because my kidney function is low. Bad muscles, bad!

Best advice ever for the scleroderma girl. Really, what else can I do?

At my last visit with my rheumatologist I was really sore to the touch, and she suddenly asked if I was experiencing brain fog…

Oh my lord, yes! It is so bad I’m afraid to drive sometimes. I struggle with anxiety and some depression when things are bad. The fatigue is off the charts when this is going on, and I can’t get good sleep. Lately I have developed headaches too…

“Oh. This is fibromyalgia“, she said. Just like that the light had gone off for her; my symptoms were suddenly sorted into another pile that screamed “fibromyalgia”. She did a quick assessment, and the diagnosis was added to my chart lickity split…

I also have Sjogren’s Syndrome, and the symptoms of fibromyalgia and Sjogren’s do overlap, but it would appear that I have both. No wonder my fatigue has been so extreme.

So, nothing has changed, but at the same time everything has changed. I have concrete reasons for feeling so bad. My blood pressure issues have improved, and I am able to walk and exercise more. I’m using my inhaler every day and my blood oxygen levels are coming up. The more I move, the better I feel. Little by little, I am getting a handle on things again. I am sleeping like a rock and I wake up feeling pretty good.

My terrible twosome of autoimmune diseases just became a triad, and I am actually feeling more hopeful about my ability to manage things. Take that, you three! I am coming after you all with a pitchfork!

Err… make that knitting needles. I’m coming for you all the same. Be warned, I am taking you down!

Knowledge is power.

The Scleroderma Chronicles: The lung results are in.

Spoiler Alert: More good news!!

Last week I drove across town to a hospital that is connected to my pulmonologist’s Kaiser office building for my pulmonary function test. If you’ve never had one of these, there is a machine that you breathe into, a computer that is calling the shots and a sealed glass booth that isolates you from the outer world. Into the booth I went. Time to get some answers!

As part of the test I used an inhaler to get a big slug of the drug albuterol. Wow. That really helped. I’ve been avoiding my inhaler for months as I would feel just HORRIBLE after using it due to dropping blood pressure.

But I just quit using my blood pressure medications two weeks ago and now it was really obvious that my breathing was much better after using the drug. “Here, you’d better take this diffuser”, said the technician giving me the tests. “You’re going to be using this!”

Wednesday my pulmonologist called me with the results. My lungs are better than they were two years ago! More to the point, my pulmonary arterial pressure is down into normal ranges and there is less leakage (okay, they call it regurgitation… what an ugly thing to say about my heart!) at that heart valve. Woohoo!! The fatal complication that we all thought I was going to have to face down is suddenly off the table. I’m not going onto oxygen. My doctor and I virtually hugged over the phone.

Here’s the deal. I have a second autoimmune disease called Sjogren’s Syndrome that can cause small airway disease in the lungs. My Sjogren’s has been pretty bad this year, and since I responded to the inhaler drug really well it looks like that is what is going on. My doctors focus on my bad boy systemic sclerosis so much that they tend to forget about this other life-altering, but not fatal, condition. This year Sjogren’s has been stabbing me in the back.

“Time to start giving your inhaler a workout!”, my pulmonologist told me. “Then try to get more exercise. Your lungs need to continue their recovery, and we are keeping you on the high dose of your immunosuppressant drug.”

Inhaler and fitbit. — I bought a fitbit yesterday and I plan to use the inhaler daily while I steadily increase my exercise. Next week I’m going gym shopping…

It’s the drug. It absolutely is the new drug that I’ve been taking for the last 2.5 years. It is a new drug for the systemic sclerosis community, one originally developed for organ transplant patients, that is now collecting a body of evidence that shows that it not only slows down the rate of disease, but also allows some reversal and healing to occur by impairing the immune system attack on the lungs. My heart is better because my lungs are better. In a time when I have been experiencing chest pain and shortness of breath, it was because I was getting better and needed to come off some of my drugs, not because I was getting worse. I am completely blindsided and gob smacked by the unexpected turn of events.

Next week is the Estes Park Wool Market in Estes Park, Colorado. I’m off to the mountains and boy will I be running wild with my BKB Deb. I’m going to pet the alpacas, eat lamb kabobs, and then I am going to buy a boat load of yarn. My new fitbit will be getting a workout!

After that I’m going to see my internist so she can look at the big picture with me to see what else we’re missing. There’s another drug that I want to drop…

That will be another post.

Scleroderma Awareness Month: Hard Word. Harder Disease.

Every year I get a note from the Scleroderma Foundation about Scleroderma Awareness Month. Take the pledge! Tell at least one person about scleroderma! Coerce your friends into joining the walk for the cure later this month.

Piece of cake. I can do that. Hand on to your phones, because here we go.

Scleroderma is a crazy sounding word, isn’t it. It is actually descriptive of the most obvious symptom of the disease: based on Greek words, “sclero” means hard and “derma” means skin. Hard skin. My skin is interesting to say the least. Hard, shiny, speckled with white patches of scaring, tight across my cheekbones and knuckles: kind of typical for the disease.

“It’s just your skin”, I was told by my ex not long after my diagnosis. “It’s not a big deal, right?”

As it turns out, this actually is a big deal. The tissue under attack by the immune system is the connective layer just under the skin. You know, the layer of the skin that produces the collagen that gives skin its stretchiness and cohesiveness. Imagine what would happen if this tissue grew really thick, stiff, and then tightened down so badly that blood circulation was cut off and it became impossible to move correctly at the joints. The skin around your mouth can be too tight for you to open wide at the dentist, you can’t bend over to tie your shoes, and forget turning your neck. If your skin won’t stretch, you are in a fix for sure! Finger tip ulcers are a constant worry, and physical therapy to maintain flexibility becomes part of the daily routine. Or you can knit. Knitting is good for blood circulation and flexibility. 🙂

Best advice ever for the scleroderma girl.

This same connective tissue is also found throughout the intestinal tract, and in many other organs of the body. The lining of blood vessels also is impacted, and there is a lot of smooth muscle (like the muscles that work in your stomach) damage. Some people with scleroderma will only experience it in their skin, but others will have damage occurring in organ systems of their body. None of this is nice; some people will lose the function of their hands, while others suffer kidney, heart, and lung damage. Intestinal tract damage is almost universal, and some of these complications can be severe. Check out this neat interactive chart of symptoms.

So, what causes scleroderma? The actual answer is… nobody knows. It is an autoimmune disease that is triggered by unknown causes, has no cure, and if left untreated in the systemic form is fatal 50% of the time. Right now there is no drug to directly treat the disease, but there are treatments to help with symptoms and to modify the course of the disease by impairing the immune system. With these drugs survival rates are way up. Seriously, hug the next scientist you come across. I personally plan to throw a bar-b-que for the next one I get my hands on.

As it turns out, this year the month of June arrives at a pivotal time in my scleroderma life. There is so much going on, and so much that I’m thinking about, that I’m gearing up to post a whole series of articles about the complexities of navigating through the world as a chronically ill patient. Seriously. I could write a blog post for each day of the month. My little notebook that I jot ideas for posts in is filling up quickly.

I need a catchy title for the series. It will be about science, biology, medical decisions, and navigating through a world of alternative medicine and treatments. You know, like fake news, but instead we are dealing with fake medicine.

Whatever is a scleroderma girl to do?

Stay tuned. I’m seriously gearing up for this. June is going to be a great month.

Hey, if you want to walk with me for a scleroderma cure, just let me know. 🙂

The Scleroderma Chronicles: The cardiac test results have arrived…

Spoiler Alert: there’s a happy ending!

It has really been kind of a rocky month. Following several episodes of shortness of breath, chest pain, heart palpitations and blue lips my doctors decided that I was due for a full round of testing. My primary care physician ordered up a battery of cardiac testing and sent me off to see my specialists.

Cookies — First up: the pulmonologist. I made these cute little sheep cookies to take to the office staff when I went in for my appointment.

I really like my pulmonologist. She is thorough, direct, and answers all of my questions without sugar coating things. I had chest pain in her office and while I was talking to her my lips turned blue right on cue. Wow. It’s like having a trick pony that performs for the audience! We talked about the possible causes, all of which were pretty serious heart conditions, and she decided that I needed to complete my cardiac testing before I did her pulmonary function tests.

I’m not going to lie, it was sounding pretty serious. She thought that I either was developing heart failure, pulmonary hypertension (a fatal complication of scleroderma), or my heart was being starved due to blood vessel constriction.

Next up: my rheumatologist. We discussed increasing my immunosuppressant dosage to crush my Sjogren’s, which has been pretty active, into submission. She hated to up the dosage unless there was no other choice due to the risk of infection, especially since she thought that it was probable that I was experiencing pulmonary hypertension symptoms, and that meant that the pulmonologist should be the lead on treatment.

What was needed, clearly, was some test results to clarify the situation. And knitting. Lots of knitting.

Knitted fabric. — I knitting like crazy all month on the What the Fade?! shawl and finished it yesterday. There has been research that shows that knitting has calming benefits greater than yoga. Since yoga is out of the question right now, I knit.

Are you familiar with Holter monitors? That’s the test where you are hooked up to sensors and wires that go to a device that records your heart’s electrical activity for 72 hours. 72 long, itchy, forced to sleep on your back, OMG, how did this sensor get attached to my hair, hours. Whew. It was done. The results: my heart was normal. Still short of breath and feeling dizzy, I went back to knitting.

Next up was the echocardiogram. Dizzy and feeling faint, I went for the test one morning last week and then headed on over to my LYS for some knitting action. Following my BKB Deb around the store looking for the yarn to knit a Tegna sweater I felt faint and ended up sitting on the floor at one point. This was getting ridiculous! Especially since the technician who did the echocardiogram test told me that she thought I would be very happy with the result…

I began to wonder if the problem could be my blood pressure. After years of battling hypertension that was hard to control I was posting some really low numbers at my checks. Maybe I was getting too low?

I did a little searching on the internet, and discovered that there was some research that suggested that it was important to keep diastolic pressure above the 60s. Oh. I was often in the 60s. Maybe I was sending my pressure down too low every time I took my morning medication. My doctors were so happy with the current numbers, but maybe things had changed. Maybe I didn’t have hypertension any more… maybe the pulmonologist was right about the blood starved heart, but it was due to low blood pressure. I decided that I should check my pressure every morning before taking my meds.

I skipped my meds and started recording my pressure readings several times a day. The chest pain and dizziness disappeared. I sent an email to my primary physician with the BP log attached and we set an appointment to talk yesterday as she had just received the echocardiogram results.

Surprise!! My heart is in better shape now than it was at the time of my diagnosis. My pulmonary hypertension is gone and my heart is now pumping normally. She agreed that my high blood pressure seems to have reversed and that the medications that I have been taking are too much for me now. We agreed to try a quarter dose for a few weeks to see what happens.

The immunosuppressant drug that I am taking has been shown to reverse scarring in lungs, and the high blood pressure drug that I was taking (in too high a dose) also may have positively impacted my heart. My skin isn’t as tight as it was a couple of years ago; it looks like my blood vessels are also now in better shape. Less stiff blood vessels means lower blood pressure. Yay!!

My doctor thinks that the drugs have caused these improvements.

My neighbor, who mows my lawn and prays for a miraculous cure, is sure that God has intervened.

I’m convinced that it was the knitting. 🙂

Next week: the lung testing begins.