Sunday, January 22, 2012

Erythema Nodosum More Pics

As this progresses, the red hot, painful nodules are now becoming large, bruised nodules. Unfortunately right when I thought I was getting better, new ones formed the other day. Tonight I am feeling better again, but who is to say that a new crop of them won't form tonight.

The main symptoms associated with Erythema Nodosum is pain, swelling, joint pain, an overall sick feeling, pain, pain, pain and more pain. I have not been able to wear shoes for at least a week and have been sporting my lovely slippers everywhere I go. Sleeping is not easy either. If the sheets touch the spots, it hurts like hell.

I have been researching and these painful lumps may very well give me the answers I have been looking for for the past 11 years of my life. I almost feel like crying in a way. Lately my husband and I have been praying a lot for healing, guidance, hope and strength to get through these times. I asked God to show me anything that may help me to find out what is really going on. I kid you not, but just a few days later these bumps showed up. When I realized what they were, it was like a brick of information struck me upside the head (haha). Maybe I won't get all of the answers I am looking for, but it very well is leading me down a new path. For a very long time I have not had any new leads and have been just chugging along doing mostly nothing new.

Tomorrow I may find out what is going on, or not. Two diseases that can cause these bumps are two diseases that can also cause POTS. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. For once in the past 3 years I am actually feeling a bit of hope of finding some answers. Then in another 5-6 weeks I will have the genetic test results back as well. It is exciting times for me.

Just to note. My heart is skipping beats left and right and I'm getting a lot of shortness of breath today as well. Not fun.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Erythema Nodosum: Confirmed

I managed to get in to see a dermatologist really fast. If you tell them you have a very painful nodule on your skin, they think it's shingles and will see you right away! Well I did not have shingles, but he was glad to see me any way. He said this is definitely erythema nodosum (yay for google!) and that he had only seen it a few times in his years as a dermatologist. Online it states he has been practicing for over 30 years...

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Erythema Nodosum: Yet another "skin" ailment

Well this is my first health update in a long time, but I feel I need to come out of my break and document this here.

I have developed what I believe is erythema nodosum. Here's the most sensible description I have found on it.
Erythema nodosum is a type of panniculitis that affects subcutaneous fat in the skin, usually first evident as an outcropping of erythematous nodules that are highly sensitive to touch.1 Most nodules are located symmetrically on the ventral aspect of the lower extremities. (Source)
I will be calling the docs tomorrow or Tuesday.. I want to get an official diagnosis and then get the followup labs/xrays done to make sure there aren't any more serious underlying issues.

How did all of this come about?

It came out of no where. I am not chelating or do anything special for my health at the moment.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a terrible pain in my ankles and in my wrist. It's been really cold, so I thought that maybe I was shivering in the middle of the night and I had strained a muscle. All day I was thinking, "wow my ankles are killing me", but I didn't even take a good look at them...

Right before bed, they were hurting so bad, I finally had enough of it and took my socks off and saw what looked like bruises. I pushed on them a bit because I'm apparently sadistic and I nearly jump through the ceiling. I ran into the other room to turn the light on to take a closer look. The areas on my feet/ankles that were sore, were bright red, swollen and hot to the touch. My husband immediately thought of gout and I went to bed thinking maybe that was it. I was too tired to do any research.

I woke up and started my journey. I ruled out gout pretty much right away because what I had was symmetrical on both sides of my feet. I had 2 red, swollen, hot, lumps just under the skin on the tops of my feet and on the side near my ankle bone. I also have one on my shin. Gout just does not present itself like that at all.

Eventually after some more reading I found Erythema Nodosum and I believe with great certainty that is exactly what I have now. Why? Who the hell knows? lol This is what happens when your body is falling apart and no one knows what is wrong. You start to manifest more problems as your body desparate tries to communicate to you that something is seriously wrong.

I know something is wrong, but I need help here!

The prognosis for this isn't bad. It's just a lot of pain, swelling and uncomfortable days ahead. Once it is out of the pain stage, these spots will turn dark like a bruise and stay like that for months. It is a slow healing condition and I hope I don't get them again. This is awful!

Some serious conditions can be an underlying result of the EN, so it's important to have everything ruled out and that's why I need to go to the docs for this one.

Causes

Common
  • Idiopathic (up to 55 percent)
  • Infections: streptococcal pharyngitis (28 to 48 percent), Yersinia spp. (in Europe), mycoplasma, chlamydia, histoplasmosis, coccidioidomycosis, mycobacteria
  • Sarcoidosis (11 to 25 percent) with bilateral hilar adenopathy
  • Drugs (3 to 10 percent): antibiotics (e.g., sulfonamides, amoxicillin), oral contraceptives
  • Pregnancy (2 to 5 percent)
  • Enteropathies (1 to 4 percent): regional enteritis, ulcerative colitis
Rare (less than 1 percent)
  • Infections

  • Viral: herpes simplex virus, Epstein-Barr virus, hepatitis B and C viruses, human immunodeficiency virus

  • Bacterial: Campylobacter spp., rickettsiae, Salmonella spp., psittacosis, Bartonella spp., syphilis

  • Parasitic: amoebiasis, giardiasis
  • Miscellaneous: lymphoma, other malignancies
Mine will likely turn out to be Epstein Barr virus (because I had a flareup with that nasty bronchitis I had around Christmas) or nothing at all. But I just have to make sure and rule out some of the others like strep, sarcoidosis, lupus or anything else like that. It's never dull!

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

23andMe Genetic Testing

For Christmas I asked for 23andMe's genetic testing available for $99 plus a 12 year subscription to their service. I was so happy to see my mom handed me the money to get it done and today I collected my saliva sample and have shipped it out.


The results will take 6-8 weeks, but I hope it gets here sooner. I am soo damn excited it is not even funny. This test will let me know A TON of things. It will take me weeks, if not months to sort through all of the raw data included, but that's ok. I have a lot of time on my hands. One really good test now available in the latest (V3) chip of 23andMe is APO E. They now test to see if you have APO e3/e4. This shows your body's ability to detox and those with APO E4 have an increased risk of Alzheimer's and it has also been found in children with Autism.

Looking around online, it also tests a lot of Amy Yasko's methylation pathway SNP's as well as DBH SNP for genetic POTS.

Finding out my APO E is well worth the $99 and I'll get so much more out of it.