sarah's health update

Since May of this year, my joints have been painful and stiff, my fingers and feet swollen and painful. I could still function fine, and was able to enjoy my summer. In mid-August, I even made a daily habit out of long bike rides after Juma went to school.

Since the end of August, the pain intensified, took up residence in my wrists, shoulders, and knees too, and found a new companion in major fatigue. I didn't have insurance all summer (that would treat me anymore besides at Yale, that is), so I just toughed it out with my new unwanted friend, ibuprofen. By September, though, I, or rather, Justin, realized I just couldn't take it anymore and sent me to a clinic. I would have rather just gone to sleep. Ten, 12, 14 hours a night had become normal for me.

The fatigue, it seems, is likely anemia, so I've added iron pills to my diet. (Funny, eh, that I got more-than-mild anemia when I spent all last summer studying it and encouraging women to take iron?) The pain, though, is still a mystery, and I am just got the results for some more tests: everything negative or normal. So the mystery remains, but at least I know I don't have lupus. It seems that something auto-immune is going on.

For several weeks, I lived in a painful daze of sleeping until 10 or 11am, picking Juma up from school, sleep-talking his way through his homework, trying to find activities for him to do where I could just sit there, and going to bed by 9pm. Oh, and wondering when the heck this was going to end.

In the past couple weeks, it seems the iron has kicked in and the fatigue lifted somewhat (I got up at 8am twice in the last week!). In the past week, I've actually had a few nights where the pain in my joints didn't wake me up for my large, middle-of-the-night dose of ibuprofen. And I've finally been alive enough to feel like I could get some of my to-do list tackled. This week, I've made dental appointments for us, reviewed Swahili grammar, and started learning Arabic script.

I'm not looking for sympathy here, just a mutual celebration that finally, finally, things are looking up.