Doctor update

ok so back to the doctor yesterday to beg him to wean me off some of this prednisone...he obliged. i'll be going from 50mg a day to 30mg over the next 4 weeks and then will see him again. labs looked good...there was a concern about renal function during that last flare...but things are fine. he'd like me to restart that godawful enbrel shot in order to get the disease under control, but there are issues with that. we still have no clear answers if it is safe to be pregnant while on enbrel or if the enbrel babies have higher risks for birth defects. it's also unclear if i can retrieve eggs if needed for surrogacy while on the enbrel. so i'm holding off until i meet with the fertility specialist next friday. hopefully she'll have some answers. my rheumatologist did point us towards a group called OTIS who gathers information about pregnancy and illness/drugs. they do have a whitepaper on Enbrel that looks a little promising. these aren't drug trials with hard data, but just data collection from people who volunteer information. so i'll take a look at that. i'll do some blog searching to see what other people are talking about too.

this process has been so frustrating because it's been 10 months now that i've been weaning off the meds, with the last three being really tough with disabling symptoms a good percentage of the time. if i had known that i'd be back on almost all my meds after a year, i'm not so sure i would have tried at all. although the whole thing showed me that i'm pretty tough and have a good pain tolerance. maybe that bodes well for labor? haha... at this point i'm discouraged but holding my head up because what else can i do? jeff and i talked about our options yesterday and he had some really good ideas about how to go forward. so now it's information gathering time...

i talked to my boss briefly about how to go ahead with my schedule at work. he had some good ideas that may work well. he was also very supportive of me taking my time to do what i need to do. he's actually given me much more leeway than i expected so i'm glad i'm there. we're meeting on monday to discuss a hard plan for moving forward, likely including a supervisory/training role over the new nurse practitioner that is coming on this month. he suggested she do the exams/notes for some of my patients in the morning hours when it's tougher for me. that way i get more hours but wouldn't be hurting myself. i would like to have more hours too so that we have more money coming in. i like working part-time but i like money too :) oh yeah and he told me his wife is pregnant too. isn't everybody???

looking forward to going to NY in a week for a family vacation...i'm needing some relaxation and good old family time.