The plan is.....

I love a plan!

Good meeting with rheumatology consultant and we have now got a plan. He examined me and looked at my bloods and decided that I do have active joint disease. He started counting the joints that were affected but gave up counting after a while! The treatment plan is for me to have methotrexate which you usually take once a week but I will split the dose over 2 days a week to try and counter the sickness. It will take between 4 and 8 weeks to work. In the meantime he was very keen for me to take a low dose of steroids. For any of you who know my history you will know that steroids and I don't get on. I had every side effect under the sun including paranoia. It is also thought that steroids might have been the cause of the scleroderma crisis going into over drive  and knocking out my kidneys. So I have decided after some discussion that I won't take those! My family are very happy with my decision! This just means that I will have to cope with the pain until the methotrexate works - something I am prepared to do rather than risk the 19% function I have in my kidneys. I really don't want to have to do dialysis again if I can avoid it. So here we go again! Hospitals will now feature regularly in my life with fortnightly blood tests and visits to GPs and consultants. I will have to be a bit more careful again about bugs and germs, not that I have been too close to them since getting ill originally. Hopefully this will work again as well as it did before and I will return to my busier life after Christmas. In the meantime I will snuggle down with my cosy fire, patchwork quilt, books, sewing, knitting and writing and wait it out. Thankful for good friends and family to travel this journey with me.

Thank you for all your emails and texts today. I have appreciated all your thoughts and prayers.