I had an appointment today with the Nose Doctor. It wasn't really a very productive appointment, but I'm glad I went. He did stick a camera up my nose, and this doctor has monitors so his patients can see what he's looking at, which is cool. So, yeah, I got to actually see inside my nose, and it is not pretty. It's really bad. Once you get past the tip of the nose, pretty much every surface of my nasal cavity is covered with crusty gross stuff. Nose Doctor tried to scrape some off, but stopped because he started some bleeding. It was pretty bad.
As horrible as that was though, my nose feels about 300 times clearer than when I went to the first doctor back in, when was it? August? For the most part, I can actually go through the entire day without being forced to breathe through my mouth because my nose is completely blocked off.
Nose Doctor gave me an option of a not-even-really-surgery procedure and basically scrape all of the junk out of my nose. This would tear things up a little bit. They would then put in some flexible rubber supports so that as the mess heals, we can make sure that the sides of my nasal cavity don't stick to each other.
I decided against that for now. I want to give the rituxan more time to work, and I'm optimistic that as the GPA is cleared up, my nose problems will get better. If they start to get worse in the next few weeks, or, if I get to remission and they aren't really better, then we'll see.
I also asked him about fixing the saddle nose. He basically said that it's not something we should even think about doing until I'm securely in remission, which makes sense because it's kind of a Big Deal surgery (would probably involve using a piece of my rib to build my nose) and we definitely don't want to go through it just to have GPA destroy it immediately after.
So that's a very detailed report on my nose.
As for the rest of me....
This is my last week of leave. I'm planning to back to work on Monday, and I'm a little anxious about it. I'm also really excited. The anxiety comes from not really having any idea how well I'll feel from one day to the next. Last week, I was too tired almost to even move on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. How much of that was because of the infusion? How much of that was because I really tried to push myself Monday and Tuesday to get a lot done? Probably most of the fatigue was from the infusion, but I really have no idea how much going to work is going to affect me.
My goal is to work a full 30 hours. I am not really going to try to do anything else next week. If I can, then that will be a super awesome bonus. If I can't get through the full 30 hours, that will also be ok. I'll deal with it. If everyone could send me good vibes and good luck next week, that'd be great.
I'm excited to go back to work for many reasons. Mostly, I'm looking forward to regaining a part of life that has nothing to do with being sick. I'm looking forward to wear real pants (I've been living in sweat pants, pajama bottoms, and leggings). I miss seeing people. I miss seeing the books too. I mean, I have book here at home, but libraries are way bookier. Also, I have a 3D printer to play with at work.
What else?
My last infusion is Wednesday. I will live blog it. I don't know if anyone is really enjoying those, but I'm kind of having fun writing them. I have no bruise from the last one. I'm thinking I was allotted X amount for bruising for these treatment and the first one got greedy and took it all. Yeah, ok, it doesn't actually work that way. What probably happened was that I reduced my prednisone (side effects include easy bruising) and don't bruise quite as easily anymore. Watch, because I said that, my entire arm will be black and blue after this last one.
I went through my closet yesterday and tried on almost everything and put things that are too small away under my bed. Probably 70% of my clothes are under my bed. I've gained about 15 lbs since this thing started, which isn't too bad. I'm not happy about it though, and am working on figuring out how best to fix it. This is a subject that is complicated enough that I will probably dedicate a whole post to it.
I think that's all I have to report at the moment. And it's later than I thought. I need to make dinner.
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