day seventy five
it's been a week and a half since i started enbrel. the rheumy sent me home with three week's worth of auto inject pens, which i don't love, but at least i was able to start right away. i've ordered syringes through the specialty pharmacy. i think i'll like those better because i can control how fast or slow i inject the medicine.
so far, no results. i don't feel any better - but i don't feel any worse. i haven't experienced any side effects from enbrel aside from some very minor tenderness around the injection site. i know it's early yet, but it's good that i seem to have avoided any major complications.
the holidays were strange. it's the third christmas since my mother died 12/03/10, and it's still strange. at least it's not as strange as the first once right after she passed. i gave everyone cash gifts, left my in-law's early, and got drunk at my aunt's house.
i actually spent a lot of time drunk after my mother passed. i mean, we'd party when we lived in florida. we had a patio and an in ground pool. hubby and i would get wrecked and have fun out there. we'd invite friends over and have bowls full of jello shots. we still thought getting wasted was 'fun' at age 30.
that all changed when my mom died. my husband became very health conscious after her death and started working out and eating better. drinking no longer was done to have fun with friends - it was a part of life. all weekend, we'd be drunk. it didn't matter if we were out near the pool, had people over. it was usually just us and we were usually wasted. when we got through the stress of selling the house and moving back to new york, we tried not to drink as much at home. but we failed quickly. we drank all the time. i know i drank because i didn't want to think. i didn't want to be in my own head. i couldn't have one drink.
i was in school for drug and alcohol counseling. it started weighing on me; i felt hypocritical. hubby and i started having serious conversations about not drinking. he didn't see it - he didn't see the problem it had become. but when i said 'what have we gained by drinking? what positives has drinking brought into our lives?' he started to get it. i told him he was an alcoholic and that i'd stop drinking with him, support him.
it wasn't until after we stopped drinking that i realized i was an alcoholic as well. even though i'd been 'clean' from drugs for over eleven years, alcohol had become my drug of choice.
my husband had a lapse in judgment last april. i was at school all day saturday and i came home to him wasted. he bought a six pack and drank it all because he knew he could handle it. he couldn't. that day, he admitted that he was an alcoholic. we don't go to meetings. i hop in one occasionally, but he doesn't want to do AA. i don't blame him - it's hard to take that look at yourself. he doesn't seem to have the baggage that comes for most of us. he seems to truly be an alcoholic, an addict - he just likes being high. loves it. i like being high because it gets me out of my head - i have that baggage. hell, i have enough baggage for the both of us.
aside from his lapse in judgment, hubby will have not drank for a year. i'm very proud of him for that. i last drank on january 4th 2013. don't get me wrong - we've had some alcohol since then. another reason we wouldn't do well in AA. if someone pours champagne and toasts my mother, i'm taking a sip. and i've done so twice in the last year. but we have each other, we support each other.
so, yeah. no improvement on the RA. no new side effects. and a strange holiday season without the numbing effects of alcohol. it's hard to feel everything when you have so many feels. but i suppose it's healing. it's what needs to be done.
happy holidays.
so far, no results. i don't feel any better - but i don't feel any worse. i haven't experienced any side effects from enbrel aside from some very minor tenderness around the injection site. i know it's early yet, but it's good that i seem to have avoided any major complications.
the holidays were strange. it's the third christmas since my mother died 12/03/10, and it's still strange. at least it's not as strange as the first once right after she passed. i gave everyone cash gifts, left my in-law's early, and got drunk at my aunt's house.
i actually spent a lot of time drunk after my mother passed. i mean, we'd party when we lived in florida. we had a patio and an in ground pool. hubby and i would get wrecked and have fun out there. we'd invite friends over and have bowls full of jello shots. we still thought getting wasted was 'fun' at age 30.
that all changed when my mom died. my husband became very health conscious after her death and started working out and eating better. drinking no longer was done to have fun with friends - it was a part of life. all weekend, we'd be drunk. it didn't matter if we were out near the pool, had people over. it was usually just us and we were usually wasted. when we got through the stress of selling the house and moving back to new york, we tried not to drink as much at home. but we failed quickly. we drank all the time. i know i drank because i didn't want to think. i didn't want to be in my own head. i couldn't have one drink.
i was in school for drug and alcohol counseling. it started weighing on me; i felt hypocritical. hubby and i started having serious conversations about not drinking. he didn't see it - he didn't see the problem it had become. but when i said 'what have we gained by drinking? what positives has drinking brought into our lives?' he started to get it. i told him he was an alcoholic and that i'd stop drinking with him, support him.
it wasn't until after we stopped drinking that i realized i was an alcoholic as well. even though i'd been 'clean' from drugs for over eleven years, alcohol had become my drug of choice.
my husband had a lapse in judgment last april. i was at school all day saturday and i came home to him wasted. he bought a six pack and drank it all because he knew he could handle it. he couldn't. that day, he admitted that he was an alcoholic. we don't go to meetings. i hop in one occasionally, but he doesn't want to do AA. i don't blame him - it's hard to take that look at yourself. he doesn't seem to have the baggage that comes for most of us. he seems to truly be an alcoholic, an addict - he just likes being high. loves it. i like being high because it gets me out of my head - i have that baggage. hell, i have enough baggage for the both of us.
aside from his lapse in judgment, hubby will have not drank for a year. i'm very proud of him for that. i last drank on january 4th 2013. don't get me wrong - we've had some alcohol since then. another reason we wouldn't do well in AA. if someone pours champagne and toasts my mother, i'm taking a sip. and i've done so twice in the last year. but we have each other, we support each other.
so, yeah. no improvement on the RA. no new side effects. and a strange holiday season without the numbing effects of alcohol. it's hard to feel everything when you have so many feels. but i suppose it's healing. it's what needs to be done.
happy holidays.
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