messtafarian
Member
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2013
- Messages
- 814
I just want to post here about the mood I am in since the email I received last night from Doctor Peat.
I am euphoric. People, I can not tell you how worried I was about myself over Thanksgiving. I have never felt so ill in my life. I went to the doctor really just for a checkup. I had not been feeling well for two months but my expensive insurance was running out, so I figured I had better get one more blood draw before I went.
The doctor ordered some tests. My iron counts were *worse* than they had been before and I also had a newly discovered POSITIVE ANA TEST with positive anti-ssb which scared me to freakin DEATH. The doctor told me to go see a neurologist, a rheumatologist, a gastroenterologist, and an endocrinologist. What???? I can't afford all that!
In the meantime I was starting to feel worse and worse and worse. I was sick to my stomach and had a terrible, terrible ear infection. My son came home for the holidays and I was too dizzy to stand up, could not eat or carry on a conversation very well. I was so sick.
Since I could really do nothing else but do a powerdrill into positive ANA online I did a tour of the general horror of my health situation. A positive ANA will show up in cancer as well as Lupus, a positive ANA with my symptoms could be sjogrens, it could be a MALT lymphoma ( don't ask me how I got there, I don't remember); and I finally realized the ear infection could be sjogrens, and then a parotid gland swelled up. I was too sick to go to the doctor anyway anymore and I didn't want to talk to her about all these procedures I was supposedly supposed to have.
Finally I came to two things. One was, I probably have a virus. Two was, I probably have H. Pylori or at least given my symptoms it would be the easiest thing to treat. If I have EBV and h. pylori the next thing I could potentially have would be a MALT lymphoma ( just take my word for it, I've put in the time here).
The problem is, going to get the viral/ANA thing treated would mean going back to the doctor and getting more tests and finding more wrong things. The nearest appointment to see a rheumatologist was Jan 5; the expense of that visit would have eaten up my deductible for an entire year.
Getting my H. Pylori treated by a doctor would mean a full upper and lower GI series to rule out cancer. In addition to the pain and misery of that it would cost a crapton of money also, even though the cost of the triple therapy h. pylori treatment if they just *gave it to me* would have been roughly fifty bucks.
Somewhere in the middle of this, I got a Saturday appointment and got antibiotics for my ear infection. It took four hours to be able to think straight and one day before I was actually walking around feeling like there was some sort of common thread to the experiences of being myself. My stomach felt tons better.
H. Pylori. But the seven day course wasn't enough. I probably need to do triple therapy, which means I need to source drugs. Plus I needed an antiviral to help with that positive ANA thing. I was looking for an antimalarial like Plaquenil that I could actually take legally.
I finally wrote to Doctor Peat. It took me that long to ask him because I wanted to organize what I needed to know before I wrote to him. He's got to be insanely busy and I didn't want to ask him a question that would probably go nowhere since it was not fully formed enough.
What I asked him was: are there safer antivirals?
Also: Can I take minocycline with Plaquenil if I order both from an unnamed place?
Do you know that man wrote me back in ONE HOUR with the answer?
I almost wanted to cry. Yes, there is a safer antiviral that is completely appropriate and it is called METHYLENE BLUE. It is an *earlier antimalarial* that is extremely nontoxic and I can order it on Amazon. Can you BELIEVE that? I've barely slept, I am nearly insane with gratitude.
And I am just overwhelmed with how absolute SUCK our healthcare system is. Really it makes me sick. Really it *has* made me sick.
I am euphoric. People, I can not tell you how worried I was about myself over Thanksgiving. I have never felt so ill in my life. I went to the doctor really just for a checkup. I had not been feeling well for two months but my expensive insurance was running out, so I figured I had better get one more blood draw before I went.
The doctor ordered some tests. My iron counts were *worse* than they had been before and I also had a newly discovered POSITIVE ANA TEST with positive anti-ssb which scared me to freakin DEATH. The doctor told me to go see a neurologist, a rheumatologist, a gastroenterologist, and an endocrinologist. What???? I can't afford all that!
In the meantime I was starting to feel worse and worse and worse. I was sick to my stomach and had a terrible, terrible ear infection. My son came home for the holidays and I was too dizzy to stand up, could not eat or carry on a conversation very well. I was so sick.
Since I could really do nothing else but do a powerdrill into positive ANA online I did a tour of the general horror of my health situation. A positive ANA will show up in cancer as well as Lupus, a positive ANA with my symptoms could be sjogrens, it could be a MALT lymphoma ( don't ask me how I got there, I don't remember); and I finally realized the ear infection could be sjogrens, and then a parotid gland swelled up. I was too sick to go to the doctor anyway anymore and I didn't want to talk to her about all these procedures I was supposedly supposed to have.
Finally I came to two things. One was, I probably have a virus. Two was, I probably have H. Pylori or at least given my symptoms it would be the easiest thing to treat. If I have EBV and h. pylori the next thing I could potentially have would be a MALT lymphoma ( just take my word for it, I've put in the time here).
The problem is, going to get the viral/ANA thing treated would mean going back to the doctor and getting more tests and finding more wrong things. The nearest appointment to see a rheumatologist was Jan 5; the expense of that visit would have eaten up my deductible for an entire year.
Getting my H. Pylori treated by a doctor would mean a full upper and lower GI series to rule out cancer. In addition to the pain and misery of that it would cost a crapton of money also, even though the cost of the triple therapy h. pylori treatment if they just *gave it to me* would have been roughly fifty bucks.
Somewhere in the middle of this, I got a Saturday appointment and got antibiotics for my ear infection. It took four hours to be able to think straight and one day before I was actually walking around feeling like there was some sort of common thread to the experiences of being myself. My stomach felt tons better.
H. Pylori. But the seven day course wasn't enough. I probably need to do triple therapy, which means I need to source drugs. Plus I needed an antiviral to help with that positive ANA thing. I was looking for an antimalarial like Plaquenil that I could actually take legally.
I finally wrote to Doctor Peat. It took me that long to ask him because I wanted to organize what I needed to know before I wrote to him. He's got to be insanely busy and I didn't want to ask him a question that would probably go nowhere since it was not fully formed enough.
What I asked him was: are there safer antivirals?
Also: Can I take minocycline with Plaquenil if I order both from an unnamed place?
Do you know that man wrote me back in ONE HOUR with the answer?
I almost wanted to cry. Yes, there is a safer antiviral that is completely appropriate and it is called METHYLENE BLUE. It is an *earlier antimalarial* that is extremely nontoxic and I can order it on Amazon. Can you BELIEVE that? I've barely slept, I am nearly insane with gratitude.
And I am just overwhelmed with how absolute SUCK our healthcare system is. Really it makes me sick. Really it *has* made me sick.