Heart of the Matter - Pt. 2

In my last post I wrote about an issue I'm having with my health. Do we know what that issue is yet? No. The results came back regarding my heart and all is well. I have a healthy heart! I am so glad that those results were negative. However, the question still remains. What is going on with my body? I had a follow-up appointment with my primary care doctor last week and they advised that my latest blood test showed that my C-reactive protein levels and my sedimentation rate was really high. Which indicates that there is inflammation in my body. They are not sure what is causing the inflammation so they want me to follow up with the Rheumatologist. This is not the first time that I've heard that my C-reactive protein is high. Years ago, I was under the care of a different primary care doctor. I presented with the same issues and he did a blood test and said my C-reactive protein was high. He suggested I see an infectious disease doctor. Results for those tests (i.e  Lyme disease etc) came back negative. The doctor told me to go to a rheumatologist then but I never went. I just left it alone. Now my husband and I are on a mission. We are going to figure out what's going on hopefully. I have an appointment set to see the Rheumatologist on September 26th.

Yesterday I went out with my family in the morning to do some preaching work. After that, my husband and I took my son shoe shopping and then we had a barbecue we attended. After coming home from a busy day, my body was so tired and I got in the bed but for some strange reason I couldn't get to sleep so I ended up staying up until 3 and then I finally crashed. Today I barely woke up. I have been in the bed all day. It feels like I am coming down with a cold. Everything hurts. It hurts to keep my eyes open. My body aches and I feel congested. This is usually how I feel after I have a long day of doing things. I have a wonderful husband because he completely stepped in. He made sure the kids had what they needed. We were invited to a back-to-school event today. So he took them out to attend that event. I knew that I wasn't going to make it. I know that this can't be normal and what I'm worried about is that school is starting up on Tuesday. I'm going to have long days at school and I know I'm going to be extremely fatigued. Coming home to keep up with things at home is going to be pretty rough but I'll take it as it comes and figure it out along the way with my husband. I also don't want this to be an excuse so I try to to push myself despite how I feel. I don't want to use it as a crutch. I haven't done that in the past and I don't want to do it now that I'm trying to seek some help for it. It's kind of emotional for me because I can't help but think is this what my life is going to be? I'm just going to have periods where I'm in the bed all day? Barely functioning? But hopefully I can get some answers from the Rheumatologist and there could be something that I can take that can help me or she can give me more guidance on what to do as far as my daily living is concerned.

In the meantime I am left to wonder. You know how when something is going on with you and you have no answers you start to get a few answers from Doctor Google? Of course it makes you think that you're dying from cancer because everything leads to cancer. 😒 Anyway, I plug in my symptoms and search high C-reactive protein and I am instantly led to articles on  lupus, cancer (of course), fibromyalgia (which could be a possibility), chronic fatigue syndrome (which could be another possibility), rheumatoid arthritis and a few other things. So I go through each article and one thing leads to another article and  another and I'm in this rabbit-hole of information. But from what I gather,  I conclude that I just need to see a professional to figure out what's going on because this has me twisted. LOL!

Just by reading these articles and looking over the symptoms of course I can say "oh yeah! I'm experiencing all this. This is exactly what I have!"   I'm not going that route because it's not always black and white either. Case in point, every symptom that I read regarding cardiovascular disease was me. It was exactly what I was going through. I did all the testing and everything is fine with my heart. I have a very healthy heart. Dr. Google was like Girl! You thought I was serious?! You know I was just playing right?

So right now I'm trying to exercise patience and in the meantime and in  between time, I'm watching what I eat and I'm trying to walk more because if it is Fibromyalgia or an autoimmune disease at least I can help that a bit by getting active and getting healthier.

I hope that any readers out there can chime in and maybe lead me in the right direction or let me know if you're going through the same thing. Have you been diagnosed? What is the illness or disease? What are you doing now to make things better?