Future

So, I'm trying to be a bit better with posting. I have an unfinished story of Presidents to tell, when that will complete I have no idea.

A couple weeks ago I visited the doctor for my monthly. Dr Jain (Pain Medicine) is my doc. I've been seeing him for assistance with PNE (Pudendal Nerve Entrapment.) He's wonderful. As you may or may not know, I was diagnosed with Rheuma Arth in 1998. This came at a point when my lifestyle and activity level was off the charts. I was mountain biking 11 miles a day, every 2nd day I was doing a soft beach sand sprint on the bike, typically yielding about a mile at a clip. 20 minutes of full out leg pumping, non-stop, on soft beach sand. I was also competing locally in various biking events as they would pop up. I was at my fighting weight of about 265 at that time (I'm 6'5").

One day I fell a couple of times which eventually led to me being bedridden within a few days, and subsequently diagnosed with RA about 14 months later.

I'd finished a hard bike trail one day out at the Pilgrim State grounds in Brentwood. Some great trails in there for daily exercise. I'd come up short on one turn, bounced off a tree, into 3 others and fell. I got up, wiped myself off, and hopped back on the bike. Finished another mile on a new trail to find that someone had layed a 28" felled tree into the trail. I hopped it mid-stride, immediately got off balance and rammed a tree head on. I got thrown again, bending a wheel badly enough to need to carry my Trek out on shoulder. I awoke the next day to find that my right hand had two middle fingers showing signs of contraction and stiff pain in the palm area. I tried rubbing the pain out, stretching the fingers back to useful and went about my day with a heavy ache. I tried to attribute the pain to blind-siding the trees.

The following day, a little more progression in the contracture. My two fingers had contracted to 50% over-night. I also could not get them straight. So I masked the affliction throughout the day. I was also doing night tours for various EMS agencies at the time, and releasing the stretcher was becoming a burden. Next day I awoke to find full contracture of the 3 middle fingers of my right hand and two fingers on my left hand. I knew immediately something systemic was happening. I banged in sick and went to the doctor. He said, muscle fatigue, and sent me on my way. I immediately left his office after fighting for a referral to Stony Brook University and went to a Rheuma specialist. He made the initial impression diagnosis on the spot, completed the first round of titer/parvo-virus blood work and gave me a script for Prednisone.

The following day I had flared in all joints in my upper torso and my right foot. The day after I became bedridden, awaiting the Prednisone to fully kick in. I began seeing the Rheuma specialist weekly. More titers, virus checks. I'd been on Prednisone for 3 weeks when my labs came back, off. I had to withdraw from steroids because my systems were experiencing detrimental effects. During this time I was fully bedridden. The pain so bad that I needed to mentally plan bathroom visits 2 hours in advance. My life had been changed, forever(?). The flares finally subsided after about 6 months when I returned to work. I wasn't though doing any emergency medicine, my favorite thing in life, during this time.

Since then I've tried various medications for RA, without success. One experimental drug actually lysed my liver and lidneys before being pulled for such by the program. I'd lived, daily, with 5-7/10 pain, and just deal with it on OTC Aleve, or Excedrin Migraine. The last hope for me to gain some life quality back was to try and gain about 80lbs. (Found effective in a study group.) That has provided me a quality of life where I could enjoy things and limited activities again, and reconnect with a host of various friends and relatives. Then recently I was prescribed Celebrex, through the pain management doctor for PNE I began experincing last summer. Since then the change in me has been miraculous. In the last 3 weeks I've dropped about 20lbs, on my way back to fighting weight of 265. I'm planning to begin, this week, a great deal of biking, and hoping to train enough to include myself in the distance road bike ride for EMS awareness from NYC to WDC in June 2010.

The world had better watchout.