First things first: The house is beautiful on the outside, and from the inside the breakfast nook and glassed in porch are still everything I’ve ever wanted in a house. However, the inside reveals a tiny master bathroom, a tiny basement, a tiny garage, possibly bad plaster, and a bunch of things that make you think “I don’t want to spend a quarter of a million dollars on a fixer-upper.” So it looks like our conscience will be clear on passing this one up. Considering all the factors I mentioned yesterday, that’s probably a good thing.
Secondly: Today was my appointment with the rheumatologist, Dr. Tammi L. Shlotzhauer. She’s written a book on rheumatoid arthritis, but I was pretty sure I didn’t have that. Over 30 years of diagnosis attempts, I’ve got a pretty good handle on what I don’t have. Not so great a handle on what I do have, though.
Any way, she listened to my story (or an abbreviated version thereof) and poked and prodded. She said “well, we don’t really have a name for what you have, but ‘degenerative arthritis’ is about as close as we can come.” Basically, as I’ve always suspected, I just have a very strong susceptability to soft tissue injury. Anyway, she suggested that I try glucosamine and chondritin. I’ve tried them before – I gave them a month, based on what some orienteering friends told me – but she says to give it 3 months, and to use a much higher dosage, and to keep using ibuprophen as needed for pain and inflammation. She also told me to do some quad lifts, something I’ve done before, but maybe in conjunction with the glucosamine it will do something. She’s also going to give my doctor a list of long term anti-inflammatories to try if the glucosamine doesn’t work. Well, I wasn’t expecting miracles, and I didn’t get miracles, but I got as good as I could hope for.
It can’t hurt. I’ll ride you relentlessly to remember your pills. Day in and day out. There will be no rest, unless you take them faithfully and regularly.
It’s because I love you.
What would your quarter of a million dollars usually buy in your neck of the woods? I make it a little over 130,000 GBP, which would only realistically buy a fairly small flat where I live.
I guess this fits in quite well with your next post regarding how scary “quarter of a million” sounds. When I was looking at investment properties a few months ago, the decent ones were all between 200 and 280 grand, and thinking about that certainly scared me!
Here are the listings for our county, from $240K to $250K. That buys a lot of house around here. In fact, one can still find quite nice small places for under $100K. Our property taxes are very high, though.
Ben, this is the property we were looking at. Just over 2000 square feet, 3 bedrooms, two and a half baths, some property, awesome view, nice neighbourhood.
Very nice; if only prices around here were as reasonable… A house like that would be well over 300,000 GBP, and could quite possibly break the 400 mark.
I use Trader Joe’s Glucosamine/Chondroitin dietary supplement — and my hand which was really starting to hurt before this is okay now (only slightly twingy occasionally). I agree with higher doses and with good quality (I suspect there are some better than Trader Joe’s but I couldn’t afford them). The standard recommended dose seems to be around 1000 to 1500 mg of Glucosamine and 800 to 1200 mg of Chondrontin.
My problems weren’t as severe as yours, but I think the supplements did help. You might want to add an Omega 3 fatty acid supplement, too.