Fall 2011 - Diagnosis!

While I waited for my appointment with the Rheumatologist/Immunologist I was getting worse. The day I woke up not feeling refreshed, I called my mom and asked her to come south (she had been offering and I had said we were OK, however I realized now that I was no longer OK). Ultimately, she stayed with us for 5 weeks. I was now having trouble washing my hair, putting dishes away, and I could certainly not carry my 1 year old for any distance. There were a couple of times I nearly dropped him. Mom came with me to the doctor. He listened to my symptoms and briefly looked me over and said, "Well, I know what you have - it's something called Dermatomyositis." I said, "I know. I have read all about it." Now fix it! I had read that a doctor who is experienced with this will know just by looking at you. I had an experienced doctor! Yes! He ran a ton of tests and said that I had to go get a bunch of cancer screening done. I could not start a steroid treatment until these tests were done. By the time I got an appointment (2 weeks later - of course) I was now having trouble writing, typing, keeping my head up for the whole day... I was still teaching, but doing so sitting down. I was putting my head down on my desk between classes, during lunch, and during planning. My students (high school) were awesome. I feared that if I stopped working, and hence stopped using my muscles, they would disappear even faster. I would come straight home after work and lay down on the couch. My husband would lift me up to get me to the dinner table, and then I would return to the couch. My muscles were exhausted. Once the tests were all run and I was cancer-free (usually it is only older patients who seem to have cancer along with the dermatomyositis), I got to start the steroid treatment. I felt better immediately. Not amazingly better, but better. I was torn between being upset that I had this rare disorder and feeling blessed that I live in an area with a ton of specialists and got a diagnosis rather quickly compared to some of the stories I had read on-line.