For my 40th birthday, I was given the gift of an autoimmune disease.\u00a0 I was actually very blessed in the whole thing, as my diagnoses came at the same time I had some of the most noticeable symptoms to date.\u00a0 I had a quick diagnoses as compared to some who have to wait years and years to figure out what is wrong.\u00a0 It all started when I had a hernia that came as a result of a surgery. The pain was the worst and I thought I was having gallbladder issues.\u00a0 It was the gastro doc that sent me for more and more bloodwork, following a trail, that figured out enough to send me to a rheumatologist.\u00a0 Six months of waiting for that appointment and, in the meantime, I’d started having neuropathy in my hands.\u00a0 I was started on Hydroxychloroquine and then, 8 months after that, suddenly realized that I was no longer feeling the non-feeling of neuropathy most of the time.\u00a0 Now, more than 3 years after that, I know how much and more the medication helps me.<\/p>\n
So what is Sj\u00f6gren’s Disease?\u00a0 Honestly, I’m still learning the answer to that question myself.\u00a0 I’ve sort of taken an as-I-go approach to it.\u00a0 I do not want to dwell on the what-if’s or what-will-be or what-can-be, etc.\u00a0 I take it a day at a time. Plus, everyone is different.\u00a0 There’s no one solid answer as to what people with Sj\u00f6gren’s will experience.<\/p>\n
In short, it’s a chronic, systemic, autoimmune disease that attacks the glands that make moisture in the body but there are a ton of other possible symptoms.\u00a0 We are talking dryness in one or pretty much all areas of the body (eyes, mouth, sinuses, skin, lungs, etc.), muscle issues, fatigue, neurological issues, gastrointestinal issues, Raynaud’s, lung issues, arthritis, liver issues, stuff I’ve never heard of, and, of course, neuropathy.\u00a0 I believe that’s a short list.\u00a0 You can have primary Sj\u00f6gren’s, which is what I have so far, meaning it’s first, or you can have it after another autoimmune condition, as a cousin of mine does.\u00a0 I have many of symptoms, but thankfully, I’m pretty controlled with the medication.\u00a0 Not say symptoms go away, but they are much better.\u00a0 I believe this to be true after a couple of weeks where I was taking a lot of melatonin and, turned out, it caused my medication to stop working and I felt what it would be like without it.<\/p>\n
More later.\u00a0 Sj\u00f6grens.org<\/a> is a great resource for information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For my 40th birthday, I was given the gift of an autoimmune disease.\u00a0 I was actually very blessed in the whole thing, as my diagnoses came at the same time I had some of the most noticeable symptoms to date.\u00a0 I had a quick diagnoses as compared to some who have to wait years and […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sjogrens","tag-sjogrens","h-entry","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valerie.xyz\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valerie.xyz\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valerie.xyz\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valerie.xyz\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valerie.xyz\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/valerie.xyz\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/valerie.xyz\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valerie.xyz\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valerie.xyz\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valerie.xyz\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valerie.xyz\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}