A Non-Cure That's Worse Than The Disease

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Typing while leaning forward in an electrically-operated Lazy Boy type chair has me hunched over and uncomfortable. It's the coffee table I've got my computer on that's too low. It's lower than the height of my knees from the floor. I could have gotten the visitor I had yesterday to help me move my computer desk from upstairs, but I didn't think about asking him while he was here.

I bought the computer table from Wal-mart. It was made in China, of course, and as a table it's put together really well. It came with another table that is smaller and not as high. I guess it was designed to hold a printer, but I don't own a printer anymore. Going online obviated my need for one. I gave the last one I had away because it had been so long since I'd used it the ink dried up inside the machine.

Giving stuff away to get rid of it is an old trick of mine. I know I oughta sell it in a yard sale or otherwise turn a profit on the stuff I give away. I don't know why I don't lust after making a profit. To me it's just simple. If I end up with some object I get tired of being responsible for or bored with looking at it I want it gone. Outta sight, outta mind.

Extraneous stuff that is so shoddy I might be ashamed to give it to somebody I burn on my trash pile. Either way is fairly quick for dumping ballast. Much of the stuff I get rid of is stuff somebody else gave to me because they didn't want it. I guess I have such a shoddy non-conventional appearance they figure I'll be grateful for their trash. I don't mind burning it for them. One of these days they might give me something I'll keep.

Yesterday, I gave away my great-grandfather's Civil War saddle to my youngest brother for him to "store properly". He's had his eye on that saddle for a while. I brought it down from my attic and laid it on the floor down in my living room to clear out my attic. I knew it wouldn't be there long.

It had been so long since I'd been up in my attic I didn't exactly remember what I had up there. I was surprised to find two musical instruments, a classical guitar who top has come unglued, and a mandolin that I have forgotten to loosen the strings on before I stored it in the hot attic, and it had come unglued too. There is nothing in my attic now.

I gave away a shabby looking framed backpack, two sprouting jars with stainless steel screened lids, and a $900 Apple monitor I wasn't using anymore. I had planned to use it as a second monitor to my iMac, but that seemed like rather stupid waste of power because I didn't use it.

There is one saying in the Gospel of Thomas that has Jesus saying that if you have expendable cash you should not loan it out for a profit, but you should give it to somebody who can't pay you back. I think that goes for non-cash stuff too. I don't have much expendable cash. Barely enough to scrape by, but I want my home clear of stuff I hoped might be useful down the road, because hope seems to be less affordable to indulge the older I get.

A friend suggested I try aspirin as an anti-inflammation drug if I seem convinced I'm allergic to ibuprofen. I do kind of think I am allergic to ibuprofen, but it might have more to do with the amount of ibuprofen I've been using rather than if I had used less rather than more.

One of the first things my doctor at the VA Hospital prescribed me was 800 mg caplets of ibuprofen four times a day if I felt like I needed it. Later, when there was a big legal ruckus over NSAIDs causing heart problems she cut my prescription back to 600 mg caplets three times a day, but by then I'd already thought I was having heart problems without realizing my fears were caused by a reaction to ibuprofen.

It's only be recently that I became suspicious that ibuprofen was causing me problems. My rheumatologist at the VA in Durham responded to my saying that I wasn't taking all three prescribed caplets a day unless I was in a lotta pain or discomfort. I started doing that because it actually helped with the pain, but there were other side-effects that caused me pause. Constipation. When I switched to naproxen, that went away.

Naproxen is also an NSAID, but it affects me differently than ibuprofen. It's been a silver bullet for me in the past, but I wanted to see how aspirin might differ from both NSAIDS, ibuprofen and naproxen. I took three 325 mg aspirins last night, and it noticeably relieved the pain in my joints. I guess I'd sort of forgotten about what a miracle drug aspirin was, and apparently still is.

There is a gold standard anti-inflammation drug for me, and probably for a lot of other people too, and that's prednisone. It can't be used long because of really serious side-effects that can take you out. But as far as finding out just how crippled I am by rheumatoid arthritis, it takes the cake. The crippling pain of my joints goes away entirely as if I'd never had a problem.

It's my opinion that I'm going to have to concede to at least some of the pain of arthritis. Trying to find something that has the affect of eliminating all my discomfort like prednisone does without the deleterious side-effects is not going to happen. Using powerful prescription drugs like methotrexate and Humira that lower my immune system to the point that a tooth infection can kill me before they can stop it is totally unacceptable to me.

My sister-in-law's brother has RA and it was diagnosed at least ten years before I was. He was taking Humira and methotrexate. He got a cyst in his throat, and because his immune system was so compromised it turned into forth-stage cancer. The chemotherapy causes horrendous discomfort and pain that made his RA seem like a cakewalk.

All of that because of joint pain. I'm treating the symptoms my way from now on unless they absolutely develop a cure for autoimmune diseases. The powerful drugs they prescribe for the symptoms bring results that are more deadly than the disease.
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