Wednesday 14 March 2012

Pleurisy fun

Random urge to write a post even though no one reads this anymore!

Hmm... heath wise, I'm okay. Pleurisy decided to visit me the other week, and it wasn't a particularly nice visit - it started on night, and I presumed that it was just general lung pain probably due to exhaustion or something, so I tried to sleep it off and hoped it'd be gone in the morning. It so wasn't, it was worse than usual and I could barely walk at all for the pain at some points. As it didn't let up I ended up going to clinic a couple of days later to get it sorted. They faffed about with the usual xray to check for a pneumothorax, even though I knew it wasn't that (but it's best to have one anyway to be on the safe side) and thankfully the xray came back with no evidence of one, but showing signs of pleurisy, so back onto 30mg pred for a few days to sort it out.

30mg had the bonus of increasing my appetite, and as I hadn't been eating much, this was the bump I needed, and after a week (even though 30mg pred just 5 days) I had another clinic appt, which was previously scheduled and we decided to keep this, I had gained 1.1kg. Woooo! I also put this down to actually bothering with my fortijuices. I'm weird and actually kind of like the blackcurrant ones, so I don't mind drinking them, I just never remember to. So having about 2 a day each day up to clinic really helped and will definitely help me back up to a proper weight.

I've been having ridiculous issues with my weight. A year ago in the summer, I managed to reach about 46kg. I'm sketchy on the date and I'm sure it was last summer but part of me thinks it was the year before... hmm. Anyway, this was a decent weight, and I was pleased with it, and wanted to increase this even more, for my lungs sake. unfortunately I managed to get ill and loose my nice bit of weight, and at the lowest point was down to 41kg, which took the piss. I'm now 42.8kg, which isn't a massive improvement when you compare it to how good its been in the past, but it's a slow process and my appetite is so ridiculous sometimes. When I'm ill and need ivs, my appetite goes too, and sometimes it just never comes back up. Although that said, I do have times when I can happily demolish the kitchen, and it still doesn't make a difference. So I brought that up with the dietitian, and she wanted to check my sugars, as so far, I've gotten to this point without developing CFRD. Sooo I had annual review bloods done at clinic, and she'll use these maybe as a baseline to check my sugars in the future.

This is just b/c a symptom of CFRD is not being able to gain weight, despite eating well - uncontrolled sugars really don't help weight gain, and its commonly known that when people with poor control over their sugars manage to get a hold over them, their weight improves. However, considering I gained 1kg in a week, the massive potential CFRD (or maybe borderline at least) worries had slightly decreased. I still don't want to have CFRD/be borderline, or whatever. I know it happens to so many CFs cos our pancreas are useless bastards, but it's just one more thing I can't be arsed with. Plus I have way too much sugar in my tea/cereal/generally anything I eat, so I can imagine trying to work out the insulin needed would be havoc. The idea of needing to stab myself with insulin after every meal isn't appealing, although I've been assured that if the worst case scenario resulted in needing to do that, the needle is tiny and doesn't hurt at all. Im not bothered about it (even though I can imagine it being right piss annoying) the thing I don't like, is the checking my sugars bit, which I've had done plenty at hospital. I have bony fingers and it always makes me jump when the pen thing stabs me. My fingers just aren't fat enough!!

CFRD calamities and pleurisy fun aside, I think that's everything covered. I'm in my last year of college now, a few projects to go, one which is due friday after next (and is costing a fortune in printing) and then I'm DONE!!! My graduation is in early july, and I'm hopefully going on holiday in June, somewhere hot and photogenic hopefully, but we can't decide on where! I've not considered the whole health insurance side of it, I can imagine that being fun and resulting in wanting to kill someone, but as insurance quotes generally need to be done over the phone, that's someone else's problem, hahaha!

And that's it. I think. It's weird blogging again after forgetting about it/not having anything to say. I do still read other blogs, but never comment as I rarely have anything helpful or constructive to say! Hope everyone's okay :)

First and last of 2018

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