The Crazy Catchup Post

Life has been out of control lately. Here's the update:

Back in August, Aharon was having severe back muscle spasms. He was almost constantly in pain and could barely move. He went to a nearby doctor who told him he was just overworking himself and that his muscles would eventually adjust to his new job. In the mean time, she recommended that he take it easy after work and maybe get the occasional massage to help the muscles relax. She prescribed him flexeril and motrin 800. Neither even made a small difference in the pain. Eventually, his back started to feel better except for some occasional pain that he had experienced before. We figured it was all because of long hours at work and adjusting to a new mattress.

Then, one Sunday in September, Aharon woke up with terrible joint pain and a low grade fever. He said he felt like he had the flu, although he had no stomach pains, congestion, or sore throat. Although the fever went away later that day (and then occasionally came back only to leave again and never hit 100 degrees), the joint pain only got worse and worse. He would wake up in the morning unable to move. After a couple hours, he'd have some mobility back, but he just wasn't his normal old self. This continued all through September and into October. Finally, when the pain made its way into his knuckles, shoulders, and returned to his back, I took him to my doctor. (I've been seeing her for almost 10 years...she is great!)

After almost an hour of gathering family history and talking about all his different symptoms, we had a few suspicions, including the following:

• Rheumatoid Arthritis
  
• Lyme Disease
• Lupus
• Polymyalgia Rheumatica (rare in someone in their 20's, but it has happened before)
  

She decided to do blood work looking for all of those possibilities and really for anything that blood could reveal. In the mean time, though, she decided that polymyalgia was the most likely culprit and started him on prednisone, saying that a fast, complete disappearance of his symptoms would most likely confirm autoimmune. She also gave him meloxicam in case the prednisone didn't help. Within 2 days on predisone, he felt almost completely better. The back pain was still there, but we figured the back pain was its own problem and not related to his other symptoms.

A few days later, his blood work came back. He was negative for RA, lyme, and antinuclear antibodies. He didn't even have a high SED rate, indicating that his body wasn't suffering from any type of inflammation. The only thing unusual was a high count of strep antibodies. Our doctor decided to change her focus away from autoimmune (which she'd started treatment for) and instead consider rheumatic fever or a strep infection in the joints. She instructed him to finish the prednisone and then begin a full round of penicillin. She also gave him a higher dose of flexeril for his back figuring that it was work-related instead of another symptom.

Within three days of coming off the prednisone, his pain had completely returned. After a few days, he returned to the doctor because the pain was worse than before and he had been having bouts of small chest pains. She gave him another round of prednisone, this time keeping him on an extremely high dose for almost a week, and drew more blood. Those tests would show that the strep antibodies had decreased, but weren't gone. She decided a echo cardiogram was necessary to rule out rheumatic fever. (The echo revealed nothing unusual.) She also referred him to a rheumatologist, and told us she figured polymyalgia but wanted a rheumatologist to make the final call.

Last Wednesday, Aharon went to the appointment. He had been sent a packet of paperwork to complete before the exam. It had gone into extreme detail about family health history, current symptoms, medications that had been tested and how he had felt with the different medications, and all of his blood work results.

The doctor spent under 10 minutes in the room with Aharon. She flipped through his paperwork and asked him a few questions about being depressed. She then poked his knees, chest, and back in a few areas. She then announced that he had fibromyaliga, gave him a script for an anticonvulsant and for an antidepressant and told him to come back in 3 weeks. When he questioned her diagnosis and pointed out the strep antibodies in his blood and his fast reaction to prednisone, she told him that strep antibodies aren't ever a cause for concern if you don't feel sick, and that any problem will react well to prednisone for a short time. (He was on prednisone for almost a month! That's not a short time.)

I'm very skeptical. While there is some medical documentation of "fibromyalgia" responding to prednisone, I believe that to accept that research you also have to accept that fibromyalgia is, in fact, an autoimmune disorder. If it is an autoimmune disorder, why do doctors almost exclusively prescribe medications that work with your brain and not with your immune system the way prednisone does? There are too many issues here. Secondly, how often do you hear of males in their 20s being diagnosed with fibromyalgia? And on top of that, how often do you hear that diagnosis after the first visit? Fibromyalgia is notoriously difficult to diagnose. It seems to me that she just didn't want to put any work into his case.

Long story short, we did not fill the prescriptions. The next few weeks will be spent gathering all of his medical records from the various doctors he's seen about this problem, and then we will be attempting to get an appointment with a rheumatologist with Henry Ford Hospital. I'd trust Henry Ford Hospital over Port Huron Hospital any day.

Unfortunately, this all falls at a terrible time. We are almost to our insurance deductible for the year, and the year is about to end. That means more bills next year. I have to attend the ATA show for work in a couple of weeks, and I'll be gone for a full week. This pushes the time frame for a doctor's appointment back farther, because I insist on attending with him.

So hopefully we'll have a concrete, believable answer soon enough and a treatment plan for Aharon. Our busy season at work is quickly approaching, and Aharon will go from 27 to 32 hours a week to 45 to 54 hours a week. This all began when he was working short 27 hour weeks. I don't know how he'll make it through long weeks.

I'm ready for the new year to get here.

Adventures in Sarahland

This weekend, from Friday through Sunday, I was blessed with not having to deal with school. I didn't even have to think about it. Nope, not even a little tiny bit. So to celebrate, I stayed as far away from my laptop as possible. This is when the fun sets in.

I'm sure most everyone is familiar with distribution lists. If you have a job with email or attend a school with email, you are no doubt part of a distribution list. In case you aren't familiar, I'll explain: a distribution list is an email address within a domain (in this situation @sienaheights.edu) that an administrator can add certain contacts to manually or by using specific criteria. In this case, the distribution list in question contained all of Siena Heights University's seniors.

We still haven't gotten an official announcement yet from the school as to what exactly happened, but here are the facts as they occured:

• Thursday Night: I get an email to join a group in Facebook for SHU seniors. I'm in the network and my graduation year is set, so anybody in SHU's network on Facebook can see that I'm a senior. Not difficult. I don't care, so I delete the email. No doubt this request/email goes out to other Facebook users.
  
  
• Saturday Night: Somebody, presumably an employee at Siena Heights, decides to use the seniors' distribution list email to create a Facebook account, perhaps to have something to do with the previously mentioned Facebook group. This was obviously not thought through, since the emails to said email address will go to every singe SHU senior. This is confirmed when a ton of people get an email confirming that our Facebook account has been set up.
  

Corollary: At this point, a few seconds of thinking (that's not even an entire minute) will lead someone to realize what has happened here, and that the best course of action is to simply delete the email. The person in question will figure out what they did and correct the problem, and life will go on. I delete said email and close the laptop.

• Sunday Afternoon: Although I do not have school to worry about, I decide to check my email. I open my laptop and my gmail notifier politely informs me that I have 43 unread emails. This is amazingly high! I open up gmail and find 43 emails from other SHU students who thought the best course of action was to reply to the email they received from Facebook stating one of the following things: I don't have facebook and don't want it, please remove me from this list, this is a work email and I don't appreciate all the emails, etc.
  
  
• Sunday Night: Someone sends the following email: "Could people stop replying to , I don't need 100 emails a day from people complaining about getting 100 emails themselves." A nice attempt, really, but the general public is stupid and unless they fully understand why, they won't stop.
  
  
• Monday Morning: Case in point, I have 10 more emails when I get to work at 7 this morning. One is from Facebook, confirming the deletion of the account that started this whole disaster (this marks the milestone of 2 emails from Facebook sent to this address and thus all of SHU's seniors). SHU has obviously corrected the problem. However, the distribution list still exists, and as people arrive at work on Monday and start checking their emails, they start replying all the way back at the beginning of this disaster. After receiving about 20 more emails, I send out the following:
  Subject: Everybody stop replying to any email you get
  "Look, this isn't a hard concept. Somebody created a Facebook account using the email address which is an email address that forward to SHU students. Every time you reply to these emails or to anyone who replied to one of those emails, you're sending the email out to other people. Actual emails from Facebook accounted for 2 messages. The other 50 some were because everyone wouldn't just ignore the messages. They've obviously corrected the problem because the Facebook account has been deleted. So if everybody could just use their brains and ignore the emails and STOP REPLYING, then nobody would have a ton of unwanted emails in their inbox.
  Simple concept. STOP REPLYING!!!! Delete and carry on with your life."
  
  
• 5 minutes later on Monday Morning: One lone email, sent to me only, stating the following: "You should run for President."
  

Higher Education is funny

Aharon's at home with a totally spazzing back. I'm not sure what he did, but the guy almost always has back pain, but I've never seen him in quite as much pain as he was in this morning. Luckily, work for him today was kind of optional. And even more luckily, his health insurance card arrived on Thursday. So he's home until around 2 and then he's going to the doctor...for like the first time in years with the exception of when he burned all the skin off his elbow last winter.

Anyway, I'm sitting at work right now with a pot of coffee and a 20 ounce bottle of coke. The coffee is to warm me up and wake me up, since it's freezing in this building. I also didn't sleep well all weekend thanks to being home alone most of Friday (Aharon was at a bachelor party until 5:30 am), a huge thunderstorm Saturday night (we're talking constant lightening and thunder from about midnight until around 4 am), and a small thunderstorm Sunday night coupled with Aharon flopping around trying to get comfortable despite all the pain he was in.
The coke (I normally drink diet) is to hopefully settle my stomach, which is full of unhappiness that should have been gone by now. (TMI: birth control. Doctor said it would take 3 months to really feel the effects. I'm going on 4 months and do not feel any better.)

But the point of my post is really this: college and why people hate me/I hate myself.

I had a class that started one week before my wedding. Stress management, ironically enough. Right away I found out I had to do a book report (because apparently senior in college equals fifth grade) and write a paper about past experiences with stressful times. The paper was due while I was on my honeymoon, so I sat down right away and did it. I can't say I put a lot of effort into it. I got a perfect score on it.

So I slacked a little. I went on my honeymoon. I came home and picked up my book for my report from the library. It sat untouched on my kitchen table for about 3 weeks. Then I realized I had two weeks to do the four-page paper. I read the first 3 pages of the book and then set it aside.

One week later, I read about nine random pages, then set out to write the report. I spend about twenty minutes writing it on Monday, and then about 15 minutes finishing it up on Tuesday. Including reading time, I probably put about 2 hours into the entire project. Aharon was upset with me for not taking school seriously. (I never have, though. He knew this before the wedding!) I told him that the wedding made me slack and that I'd do better next semester.

I got my paper back Saturday night.

I got a 100%.

Aharon = furious.
Sarah = a little disappointed that I was basically rewarded for being the biggest slacker-who-is-still-a-straight-A-student in the history of the school.

I want to get a degree. I want to learn. I just don't want to do homework or learn about stress or read books.

It's not my fault that school comes naturally to me. Ask my mom, if I would have put even a slight effort into high school, I easily could have been top of my class. Instead I slacked off and graduated fourth. I was thrilled about that, but I knew I could have done better.

I guess I just don't have any motivation.

That's why I want to go to law school. I think it's the one thing that would actually provide a challenge to me and be interesting at the same time! I may actually put some effort into law school. 'May' being the key word, here, though. Because after I graduated magna cum laude and not summa cum laude when I earned my Associates, I said I would actually apply myself at Siena. That clearly hasn't happened.

Liana

I have a niece! (Well, on July 3rd I will have a niece, but I don't freaking care, she's my niece now!)

Sharaya (Aharon's little sister) had her baby! Liana June Marie Roach was born Monday, June 15th at 2:26 p.m. She was 9 pounds, 6 ounces, and 21.5 inches long. (She's exactly one day old!)

Although Sharaya and I did not always have a good relationship, I have been working hard since about February to try and fix that. Yes, I was in her wedding, but I still wouldn't have considered us close at that time. It really wasn't until February when it basically hit me that she was going to have that baby and that she would then be my niece. I was going to have a niece. I did my best to try and make things right with Sharaya. Unfortunately, I can't go back in time to when we met five years ago and be her friend then. Although if I could, things may not be like they are today and I wouldn't want to lose that.

I always knew that I wanted to be as close as possible for the birth, but I never thought Sharaya would want me right there. (I'm not even sure if she knew what she wanted to do until it was time!) I did my best to be available for her over the last few weeks, and on Sunday when she headed to the hospital, I headed up too. She did not end up having the baby that night, and I went home. Maybe I should have stayed, but I didn't. She was set to be induced at 6 a.m. Monday morning, and I arrived in her room at 5:55 a.m. on Monday morning. We were in that room all day. We had hoped for a baby by noon, but she wasn't ready. At 2 p.m., it was time to start pushing.

Sharaya and I had talked a little during the day about me being in the room. I kind of wanted to, but I have a weak stomach for smells (but nothing else) and wasn't sure I'd be of any help. But I'm also good with being rock solid emotionless when necessary. When the nurse needed somebody to hold a leg, Sharaya said I could do it, so I did.

And let me just end with this, when Liana was born, the amazing feeling that followed is truly unforgettable. I've always wondered how parents always say they loved the baby so much more when it was born. I've never understood that. Sure, it's your kid, but it just got here. Let its personality grow on you a little. But nope. You don't have to. It just hits you like that. And I'm not even the parent, just an aunt. I can't imagine what it will feel like when it's my own kid.

Sharaya, thank you for allowing me to experience something so amazing with you, Jeremy, and Liana.

Jesus IS watching!

Aharon and I went shopping last night to finish up our wedding and honeymoon shopping. Really, we were only shopping for Aharon since getting him to go is difficult. Thus, we were out shopping in the pouring rain with only 21 days to go. He still needed a dress shirt, belt, sun glasses, shoes, shorts, and a tie. Plus we needed a tie for my dad, Nick, and Aharic. So off we went.

Things were going very smoothly. We left around 5 and by 7 we were on our way back home. About 10 minutes outside of Chesterfield, my phone rings. It's Aharon. I automatically assume he's pocket dialed me and tell him so. He begins looking around for his phone, but doesn't find it. We pull over and get out to search the car. No phone. He decides he must have left it in a fitting room. We get back in the car and turn around.

First I call Old Navy since he was most anxious to get out of there. Nothing's been found. Then I called Kohl's. Same thing. I call his phone again, and there's no answer, but the phone still rings. So it hasn't been shut off. Aharon says to call and shut off service with Verizon, hoping that if someone has it they'll think that it will never work again and will turn it in. Instead, though, I send his phone a text message.

"If you have this phone, please turn it in. We were out shopping for our wedding and don't have the money for an insurance claim. Do the right thing. Jesus is watching."

We get back to Chesterfield and decide to go to Old Navy first. Aharon is almost positive he left it here and figures it's most likely that a kid grabbed it here. We get out of the car and take one step toward the store. But then, I get a text message. From Aharon's phone!

"Kohl's customer service."

I stop walking and say, "I think your phone is at Kohl's...because it just texted me."

So, back in the car and over to Kohl's. We get to customer service and Aharon asks if anyone turned in a cell phone and describes his. The girl asks if we were the people who had called a short while earlier. I tell her yes. She then tells me that while she was on the phone with me, a guy walked into the restroom. A few minutes later, he walked out, slammed the phone down on the counter, and then walked away without saying a word.

I asked her if she had texted us saying it was at Kohl's customer service. She said no - she couldn't even figure out how to get the phone screen to turn on.

All in all, a good day.

Thanks, Jesus!