Anyhow, assorted docs in Chicago assured me they could find nothing wrong with me.
Well, they thought it was Lyme disease at first; despite the fact that I could think of approximately one-half of a very remote chance I'd been anywhere near deer in the past six months. Managed to rule out gout (oh boy!) and finally gave me a quasi-diagnosis of "Well, you're just hypermobile, and sometimes hypermobile people have unexplained joint pain. You should try some strength training." Right. I mean, okay, yes my fingers can bend backwards kind of strangely, and yes, I googled the living crap out of "Benign Joint Hypermobility Syndrome" and it's a real thing, but should I be lifting finger-weights? What?
So...here's what I am almost embarrassed to be proud of. I've got an appointment with a new rheumatologist down here. And, thanks to my time in the hedge fund industry plowing through spreadsheets, and my TFA indoctrination (data! data!! DATA!!!) . . . I have determined to solve my rheumatological mystery with Excel!!
Yes, I really made a graph. I am a huge loser. But when you have data over like, 18 months, and you can turn it into numbers (I rated how inconvenient/painful my joints were each day, and how many joints were involved)...how can you NOT want to make that into a graph? I need Edward Tufte to make me some beautiful, visual data.
Anyway. I am determined to get some doctor to give me something I can do so that I don't have weird swollen lumps of fluid popping up on the back of my hand (even if they're useful to gross out students with). At the very least, I will show up to my appointment with enough paper in hand that someone will have to diagnose me with something before I leave. I'm the obnoxious patient who gets made fun of on "House" because she read something on the internet and is insistent about it. Well, unless Hugh Laurie wants to be my doctor...I have no shame. I come equipped with records of symptoms and my diet and ... oh yeah! That's the other fun part!
I've been reading on the internet (I know, I know, where all the wacky alternative health crazies hang out) a lot of anecdotal evidence about people with rheumatoid arthritis (oh yes, this is my tentative self-diagnosis, by the way) have eliminated certain foods from their diet and been symptom-free for months, or years. Scared it into remission with leafy green or something. Some people think food intolerances can trigger autoimmune responses and blah blah blah, whatever. Point being, after Christmas, I am going to be trying an "elimination" diet of typically-hypoallergenic food (lamb, pears, salad, olive oil, and approximately four other things that don't go together...venison is okay, for example, and bananas) for a couple weeks to see if my symptoms go away. Then if they do, I reintroduce food groups back into my diet to see if anything triggers symptoms again. It's like a fun (okay, 'fun' might be an overstatement) puzzle, with lots of data and lists and tracking (TFA!! Get out of my head!!!) and other fun stuff. Like, am I a huge fan of lamb and pears? I mean, when I can't eat them with anything good like sugar or rice...not so much. I'm not going to like going carb- and dairy-free for a while. But. I also like having full use of all assorted limbs, thank you very much.
That will be the big adventure upon my return from break. To be honest, I need some joint or another to stay painful until then because otherwise I'm going to find the motivation hard to come by. I like food. A lot. All kinds of it. But I also like keeping track of data and trying to find patterns and being OCD about lists of things. And as mentioned before, I like my joints. Bring it, Dr. Something-Persian-sounding whose practice is all the way in Ballantyne. Brace yourself. I come with spreadsheets.
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