Teaching Tuesday…

As some of you are aware, I suffer from a few “invisible” diseases.  There is little known about most of them and I have put most of my own facts together with the help of a few doctor’s tests.  Nine times out of ten, I have led the doctor in the direction of the correct test to find out what is going on.  I am not, by any means bragging.  Quite the opposite.  I wish more was known about these things, but sadly, there isn’t.  So to get you up to speed, I have Hereditary Hemochromatosis, a gene went crazy and decided to suck all the iron out of life and store it in my body, thus trying to kill me.  It failed because it spawned another disease called Porphyria Cutanea Tarda, making you think I am a vampire who will burn in the sun.  Thus producing horrible blisters years ago that alerted my doctor that something was wrong.  Aha!  Take that.  Many, many, many years of phlebotomies lulled my body into a false sense of security.  It awoke the “sleeping dragon”.  Ha.  Hashimoto’s Disease.  My joints were inflamed, and then my stomach started hurting pretty much every single day.  That was umm, 2 years ago I think.  Last year, I was diagnosed with stomach inflammation, no surprise there, but apparently gastritis is caused by guess what…anyone? Anyone?  Hashimoto’s.  Good answer.  All of this puts your hormones out of whack, thus causing Fibrocystic Breast Disease.  Which can be linked to the underlying cause of estrogen dominance by paying for a simple little spit test, in which you must collect your spit all month-long.  No joke, and freeze it.  Really.  No, don’t get that ice, umm, use the other.

So, are we on track now?  I hope so…because that brings you to the reason I am doing this.  No, don’t look.  Or look, but put your hand in front of your face and peek through.

My friends had witty things to say, and they made me laugh.  I really do want you to use humor as it helps me stay reasonably sane.  This is the first in a series of tests to figure out why my lips were swollen last week and what is going on.  It’s awesome.  I go back two more times.  I’ll know the last Tuesday of the month.  Hopefully, this will clear up my stomach pain once I eliminate whatever food might be causing some of this.  Just one more piece of the puzzle that is me.

“Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it.”  ~Michael J. Fox

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