Azathioprine

Well, it's been kind of an up-and-down month or so health-wise. After the debacle of the drugs test,
I had a couple of great weeks on prednisolone... but you can't stay on
steroids forever, and as soon as I came off the drugs I was back to
square one - not passing anything solid, feeling run down, stomach
pain... not fun.



So last week I had my latest appointment with my consultant, and now I'm on Athazioprine, which is strong magic indeed. (see here for
a bit about how it's used in ulcerative colitis) It's an
immunosuppressant, so it's damping down my immune system's responses
generally which is kind of alarming (what happens if I catch something
else while I'm on it?!), but I'm assured that in cases like mine it's
pretty good. And little sis is on something similar for her arthritis,
so I'm hopeful that there won't be any problems. Nonetheless, I still
have to go in for blood tests every week for a bit, until everybody's
happy that there are no serious side-effects.



The main downer about this new voodoo is that it takes up to 3 months
to actually start working. In the meantime, I'm not allowed to take my
balsalazine (anti-inflammatories), nor any steroids (already had three
courses in the last six months), so I'm feeling pretty dreadful -
tired, occasional stomach pains, and diarrhoea. And (I think it's
because I'm getting dehydrated from all the liquid going out the other
end) I'm getting quite a bit of cramp if I even get slightly cold. It's
all very depressing, and I feel like I'm really not much fun at all.
Went to a party last night, but really didn't feel particularly
sparkling - "so what do you do for hobbies?" "Not a lot, at the
moment." ... all a bit of a bummer, really.



Got to look to the future, that's all. Hopefully the Az will have kicked in in time for the festival in August...