One good thing!

So I was so caught up in updating all that has been going on that I almost forgot to share one good thing!!  I think my new meds are starting to work!  I have been having SUCH a bad flare up.  My worst one in years.  The pain was intense and for me, that says a lot.  It was impeding my everyday life and even walking was so difficult.  I missed several days of work and my sweet girl literally had to help me shuffle to the car one particularly bad morning so that I could take her to school.

I had already done two rounds of steroids in the last few months (can someone say extra swimsuit weight?!  Grr!) but the relief was temporary.  So, when the pain medicine wasn't even helping like at all, I called the doc again.  It took almost two weeks but they got me an appointment and he switched my medicines.  I still have to give myself the Enbrel shots once a week.  (And believe me when I say that does not ever get any easier!)  He took me off the plaquenil, which I don't think was helping at all.  He put me back on a stronger drug, methotrexate.  It's a drug that I took for years and actually when I was a young'un - 12 I think - I was in the trial study when it was first used for RA patients!  It's actually a chemo drug, which means that it has some nasty side effects.  Part of the reason I went off of it was to have my sweet girl.  (There is a risk of severe birth defects.)  It also causes some pretty intense tummy troubles, which are side effects that I am very much used to, but hopefully it won't be too severe this go around. 

The problem with the change in meds is that it isn't ever an immediate fix.  They take time to see if they are going to work.  So, to help me through the transition period, the doc gave me a big ol' steroid shot in the caboose.  At first I wasn't so sure it was going to help at all!  I didn't seem to feel any relief.  But finally, after a few weeks it started to ease some of the intense pain and limited mobility in some of my joints.  I knew it was hard to say just when the combination of methotrexate and Enbrel would start to make a difference.  I wasn't even sure if it would.  But this weekend I realized that in the hullabaloo of the last week, I had missed both my Thursday shot and my weekly dose of methotrexate.  By the time I realized it, I was feeling pretty sore again.  So, on Saturday I shot it up and today I am feeling a little better.  Which is good because it means that the drugs are working. 

Praise the Lord for good meds!