My auto immune illness

I've developed an auto immune disease where my immune system began attacking the substance that joins one cell to another and destroying it so that my cells were becoming unattached from each other. I'd had it for some time but it wasn't clear what was happening until it showed itself in the blisters, ulcers and purple patches that developed. There are other symptoms too but they are the most obvious ones.

It's a very rare illness and I was lucky to have a doctor who became concerned that there was something seriously wrong soon after the ulcers started appearing and got me seen as an emergency at the local hospital. The illness is very painful though the pain is being kept under control to some extent with morphine, both slow release granules and liquid morphine, paracetemol and ibuprofen. It also slows your body down I suppose because of all the damage done to it.

It's being treated with steroids, prednisolone, and steroid sparing tablets, azathioprine, which maximise the effect of the steroids. I've also got various creams, mouth washes etc to help with the symptoms until the illness is under control and I've medication to take to counteract the side effects of the steroids.

Hopefully I'll be reducing the steroids in the next few weeks to a maintence dose to keep the illness under control. And, then, in a couple of years, hopefully I won't need them at all if the illness has cleared up. But it takes a couple of years of treatment for this to have a chance of happening.

I can feel that I'm getting better though a heavy cold has made some of the symptoms worse again. The pain spiralled and my left leg developed symptoms which made it feel heavy as if it'd "gone to sleep" though this has been accompanied by quite a lot of pain. My left foot was quite badly affected by the illness earlier on. I'm slowly getting better again though even though I've still got the cold.

I'm a vegan though started eating vegetarian food in hospital because I couldn't manage to chew the beans that made up quite a bit of the vegan menu there. I'm staying on a vegetarian diet for the next three or four months or so while my body heals and gets used to the medication I'm taking as I don't want to give it another change by changing my diet again while I'm going through this stage. I wondered if I'd been eating too much dairy produce as the cold I've got now is using up lots of tissues which I'm not used to and I believe that dairy produce can cause you to have lots of mucus so I think I'll take my diet back to more of a vegan one but I'll still eat a little vegetarian food. I'll go back to a vegan diet in about four months time when my body will be much stronger and used to the medication and will be quite able to cope with the change of diet.

I'm tired today. I went to Birmingham yesterday to buy someone a belated birthday present. Bought them a Steve Earle compilation cd and a 2 cd collection of Townes Van Zandt's music which I bought for under £10. The time out has left me tired though. I was told that it would but I didn't realise that I'd feel this tired. Woke up this morning feeling absolutely zonked but it's clearing as the day's going on. There're other ways though that I can see that I'm getting better regardless of this cold. The pain's still pretty awful at times though but I know that it'll eventually get better and it's just there while my body's healing.

I can cope with it all. I had a good night's sleep last night too, regardless of waking up feeling so tired this morning. Slept through the night and had about ten hours sleep.

(yay!!)

I'd been feeling ill for quite some time before the illness was diagnosed and treated. I know that it's going to take a while before I'm feeling a lot better because the illness has done a lot of damage to my body and that's got to be repaired but at least it's all being treated now and I'm getting better.