Sunday, March 2, 2008

New Symptom?

The really frustrating part about this illness is when something new starts hurting or acting weird, I'm never sure at first whether it's a new symptom or simply unrelated.

For the past week or so, my left knee has gotten increasingly stiff and painful. It's made getting down on the floor (and back up!) really challenging because I can't kneel on it and I also can't put all my weight on it to stand up without it feeling like it's going to give out on me. I end up needing something to help pull myself up with, which ends up hurting my hands and wrists.

It's just the weirdest thing. I'd say it felt sort of like an injury, but I haven't done anything that injured it. It's not like I'm all that active these days!! (And maybe that's the problem?) I've been comparing it to my right knee, which just has the "usual" level of joint pain I've had for months now, and it doesn't look noticeably swollen or anything. It's just ... weird.

I'd probably try to go see my internist this week but she's off for the month because her son had to have surgery. And it doesn't seem urgent enough to go see a doctor I don't know at her practice. So I guess I'll wait and mention it to the rheumatologist when I see him March 11 ...

It's just so weird the way my symptoms morph sometimes. From what I've read, that's not uncommon for patients with things like lupus, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, etc. And even though I still don't have a definite diagnosis, I do have a lot of similarities with those kinds of illnesses. It's just so hard that just when you think you've adjusted to a set of symptoms and learned how to cope with them, they change. Not drastically, necessarily, but enough that I need to find a whole new set of coping strategies.


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