A journey to Health

About a week after my last shot, which was last week, starting Friday I felt the best I  have in a while. Though extreme temps still bother me a bit, it calmed down quite a bit, just in time to let me go ice fishing! I took extra precautions but, I didn't get that chill to the bones feeling which was great. It feels good to feel good. I love times of the month like this! Did some digging today into my medical notes online. I came to realize that I had the same labs that looked over my immune system about one year prior to the labs that found the autoimmune disease. The reason I had these labs done was, I had to have my gallbladder taken out. However the doctors did not believe me. And NOW I see why. The labs back then showed my immune system had been weakened. Not by a lot, but enough that they would question chrones, some sort of a digestive disease or something far worse. So even though I had a gallbladder test that showed it needed to come out, according to them, it was only

Today I got the usual 4 week phone call. It usually is a week ahead of schedule but they are backed up, and I know my routine anyway, as I am due for the shot tomorrow. We went through the usual-How are you? Any side effects? Any flare ups? I told her of my latest flare ups and issues with dehydration, my ongoing frustration at the reality that this is my reality and maybe I should take a break from Xolair just to see how it goes, cause really I could just take more antihistamine..... Which is why they pay someone money to call me and check in before I make my usual shot. To shoot me back down to reality and to assure the shot is working. She reminded me the other risk, other than a higher risk of cancer when I am older, is that once I go off the shot, I might not ever be able to go back on it. As it is a protein, an antibody itself (which is what has been attacking me, confused yet? I know). So there is a risk that I could have a flare up because of the shot already, but if I wer

Last year I was diagnosed with CIU. I will explain what it is then how it effects me. Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria. Chronic Urticaria means chronic hives, Idiopathic means they don't know why this happens. What happens is an antibody gets triggered, then attacks my healthy cells. This forms the mast cells (hives). Then these antibody's travel through the rest of my body looking what looks foreign to it and attacks it.  This is an autoimmune disease. To me, this means I can eat any piece of food then I break out in hives, I start to swell, then it attacks my stomach and bowels, putting me in alot of pain. Finally, it targets my eyes causing severe rash around my eyes, severe dryness and, yes, blindness. The risk is that I will eventually swell to the point I will choke to death. We don't know what else will happen because my doctor has not seen to many people with this disease that it attacked my stomach/bowels and eyes like it did me. This disease is different for