the wolf at the door

yesterday was a rough day for me, i think.

yesterday i learned that i have lupus.

that's a mixed bag and i feel ambivalent and kind of smacked around.

the mixed part is i'm over fifty years old and have always HAD lupus, so it's not like all of a sudden i have a disease i didn't have before.

i have lived for a long time with a lot of pain and weird allergies and unexplained flareups of medical problems that are here and gone but it's just pretty much been my baseline condition.

fatigue and pain that come and go and for which there's never been any explanation.

the doctor said "rheumatoid arthritis and lupus" and i just continued nodding while he talked of treatment options.

and then "hey wait. are you saying i have either of those things?"

and he said "probably both. but with the DNA marker and the antibodies and the symptoms, yes. you have lupus."

so i felt sad about that, but all of a sudden there's a REASON for a lot of these things and beyond there being a reason (and boy, i tell ya, that  takes a weight off of you), there are also TREATMENTS.

there are no guarantees any of them will work and it may take time to find something that does and even with good treatment, there's always the risk of flare-ups.

but HOLY SHIT it puts some hope in me, because "i am in pain and the pain has no known reason and it is only going to get worse as i age" was not giving me a lot of hope.

also, here's more good news. i wear glasses. sometimes (skiing and biking) i wear contacts. those things are expensive enough, but my insurance does not cover those doctor visits. now as a bona fide lupus patient, i'm going to have to go to an OPTHALMOLOGIST for a yearly checkup and while i'm there they can also update my glasses prescription and THAT'S covered by my insurance.

i am mary sunshining the hell outta this.

because i feel kind of beat up.