Dr. Frank

Lots of medical news.

Yesterday afternoon, Bill developed a fever (he's fine -- I'm not going to make you read the whole entry to get to that point). He hit 103, just out of nowhere, and his muscles were sore. It all seemed to come out of the blue, though some of the muscle soreness was anticipated as Bill had spent a good part of Saturday morning spotting kids as they practiced their gymnastics. I gave him some ibuprofen to break his fever and stared at him for most of the rest of the day. He said he felt very cold and got under the blankets for all of the 45 seconds I would allow that. After some rest, when he took a shower, I could hear him shivering and shuddering under the water from the bedroom. To hear it, you'd think he was bathing in ice water. I urged him to take some Cipro as per the doctor's orders: If you develop a fever out of nowhere, take the antibiotics immediately and seek medical help and when he finally agreed, accidentally gave him a cyclobenzaprine, a muscle relaxer (read: CNS depressor) which is probably exactly why I am not a doctor. Despite my medical error, his fever broke pretty quickly. Bill suspects it's because a muscle relaxer mellows your muscles and halts the fever by stopping their cells from burning calories to make heat. But, Bill can write more about his own condition later.

As I was crawling into bed on Saturday night, my right knee felt funny. There was a raised area adjacent to the knee on the upper side which felt somewhere between hard and swollen. The next day, my range of motion was noticeably limited. I panicked. Man did I panic. I panicked so hard over the thought of my arthritis returning that I had no reaction but to be reduced to crying. I had a complication quite similar to the flagship ailment at the nightmarish dawn of my mysterious and crippling arthritic condition back in August 2008, wherein I sustained no injury, had no allergic traceable reaction, and was barely stressing the joint. To experience a near exact replica of the beginning of that physical and psychological tilt-a-whirl was not something for which I was emotionally prepared. It's not something for which I suspect anyone is emotionally prepared. Having spent the better part of a year unable to live my life at the level of capability all the previous year had prepared me for, looking at an image of the past and considering the possibility that it may be the future was absolutely frightening. At some point in what I think was November, the last joint in my body to lose its stiffness, my left index finger, had gone stiff again overnight. It shattered me. The thought of going back to the state I was in, it absolutely freaked me out.

Anyway, after a day of relaxing at the Galleria and practicing qi gong, I wasn't feeling any better. In fact, by this morning, my right knee was about 150% the size of the left, I was limping, and my range of motion was a joke. At Play Group, I couldn't even sit on the floor with the kids, which was truly an impediment to the connection I typically tend to feel with them. Today, Bill and I made our way to FAME, where I met and was treated by (because I asked for him, specifically) Dr. Frank, the American doctor. It was good to talk to someone who was fluent in not only English but sarcasm about my health problems. When I went to FAME last week, I felt there was a bit of a disconnect between the Tanzanian docs and myself when explaining my coughing and weakness issues. Since today I was going to have to deal with explaining the past year and a half to someone as background for my seemingly randomly swollen knee, I needed to not have to worry about that.

Dr. Frank is great. He's a funny guy with an attentive but laid back personality. He listened carefully as I lay the puzzle pieces in front of him and seemed eager to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. You have to realize: every doctor I'd been to up until this point was so resistant to show uncertainty or bewilderment at my very uncertain and bewildering condition. To see someone sit back, brow a-furrowed, actually admitting that these ailments were alien to him was quite refreshing. It meant that he was thinking. Dr. Frank seemed enthusiastic about figuring out what I had, and was quite honest about having not heard of such a strange course of medical events. He's a self-described "research nut" and when confronted with the puzzle pieces that are my symptoms (and a hat trick of fluids), said, "I love a good mystery!"

Even though I left FAME yesterday with no real answers, I was given something for which I'm very grateful: According to Dr. Frank's research thus far, I may, may, have something called Reactionary Arthritis, a condition that manifests itself as an inflamed joint, typically in the lower extremities, when elsewhere in the body there is some sort of infection. When I heard this, I shrugged and said, "I don't have any infection..." to which Dr. Frank replied with "Actually, you have a raging UTI and a shit load of hookworms."

Woohoo!

He also said I was passing ketones, proteins, pus, all sorts of awesome things. The word "ketones" brought back some memories from the summer of 2008; memories which were covered up by my full-body arthritis, which had taken hold immediately afterwards. The docs and lab techs in the States wrote off my ketone passage as something related to Diabetes as soon as they learned of my family health history. I, however, have always tested negatively for Diabetes. The blood tests Bill and I scraped together the funding for in '08 showed that, at least on paper, I was in good health. My blood count, liver, kidneys, sugar, everything was fine. Both of my acupuncturists, however, reported treating my kidneys as part of easing my symptoms. And here I am again, with another knee problem, passing ketones, and having kidney problems. The fact that a possible name has been suggested for my condition is something for which I can't describe elation.

I'm not going to hold on to this potential diagnosis until more talks with Dr. Frank. He took my email address and we are going to keep in touch as he conducts more research or as my symptoms wax and wane. But it is nice to have been told "I'm not certain, but one thing it could be is..." rather than "Nothing seems to be wrong, and you don't have..."

$20 for all of that, too...

Alright, all for now. Mom, others: don't worry. I'm not in pain.