My three-month appointment with the rheumatologist was yesterday.  She gave me the go-ahead to get the booster, and we talked about how to time my other meds (the shot of Stelara I got that morning was irrelevant, but I'm to skip the methotrexate next week, and wait for a ten day interval from the booster shot before resuming it.)  I was able to get the booster shot less than an hour after my appointment.  I had to show my vaccine card to ensure that there was a six month interval since my second shot.

Otherwise my appointmet was uneventful.  At the prior one, we had discussed switching biologics.  She asked if I'd given that any consideration, and I told her that when I checked my "RA journal", I found that I had been consistently tired and achy at my June visit each of the last four years, and I now suspect that it's more of a seasonal problem with farmwork triggering inflammation.  Her records, when she checked, showed that at that apointment each year, I'd said that I wasn't sure what we were doing was working too well, but by the following (Sept) appointment each year, I seemed better.  So I decided to stick with what we're doing and make some changes in how many extra hands I hire here seasonally, and see if I can't flatten that curve a bit next year.  I'm switching from Meloxicam to Celebrex (which I've taken in the past without problems) because my hands are  more swollen than either of us would like to see at this point in the game.

Mostly - and this did not come from my rheumatologist specifically - I'm realizing that the best thing I can do for my RA is get my weight down, manage my blood sugar and blood pressure better (both are consistently marginal) and, overall, deal better with stress.  Of course it's a stressful world right now, which makes that an extra challenge, but on the other hand, if I can learn to meditate / exercise / create my way past stress durng climate change and a pandemic, I can probably be pretty certain that I've go the de-stressing thing down pat, right?