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Showing posts from March, 2017

Hope is in Short Supply

The past six months have been brutal. In addition to rheumatoid disease, my doctor suspects I have fibromyalgia, and that would explain the all-over body pain I've been fighting. It is bad enough to have your joints inflamed, swollen, and aching. Add in the feeling of coming down with the flu - throbbing muscles, pounding headache, incipient nausea - and you have a description of the past half-year for me. My right knee has been swollen and very weak. After a couple of weeks of pain that I could manage, about two months ago, my right leg was in agony from hip to ankle. Driving was the worst - just the twenty minute drive to work was torture. I developed two large knots behind the knee, which was, itself, about the size of a grapefruit. I had an emergency appointment with my rheumatologist, who put a steroid shot into the knee, under the kneecap. In a joint so full of fluid, the addition of more liquid was almost unbearable. After another week or so, my knee began to respond to th