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.