New Treatment Side Effect

Here I am years after cancer enduring yet another side effect.  I should have posted this a year ago, but I got busy and, to be completely honest, I forgot I had a blog.

While I am still a happy member of the lucky 9%, I am now a member of the long-term side effect catching up to me group.  I am now the lucky, still alive and living with Psoriatic Arthritis.  This is directly related to the immunotherapy from 2013-2014.  As long as I am still up and moving, I'm still calling it a win.  It is just a new sort of normal.  I've been battling for about a year now, I think.  looking back, the psoriasis began in 2021 or 2022.  At first, it was an awful skin condition that took a while to figure out.  I sort of felt like a snake/human hybrid.  The psoriasis on my face and scalp was terrible.  It wasn't easy to go anywhere because it felt like everyone was staring at my inflamed and flaking skin.  It did take a few years to spread over the rest of me, then the joints got involved after I had wrist surgery.  

I had surgery on my right wrist in August of 2024.  After years of being unable to do a proper pushup, it turns out my right ulna was 2cm too long and had been beating up my wrist bones for ages.  I still can't do a proper pushup, but now I know why.  I will not recover the mobility I had in that wrist, but it doesn't hurt like it did anymore.

So, today I have inflammation in some of my joints.  Oddly, the roughest joint is my left hand/wrist.  Currently it aches all of the time and it takes a good hour or two of warming it up in the morning to make it function properly.  Most of the affected joints are on my left side.  Left ankle, knee, hand, wrist and shoulder.  Sometimes the right hand/wrist gets involved and the right shoulder, but that is nowhere near as bad.  

I've been seeing a Rheumatologist.  I get bloodwork several times a year because the meds can mess with me.  I'm on my 3rd medication.  I take a Skyrizi injection every 90 days, daily anti-inflammatory and a weekly anti-inflammatory followed by a strong B supplement.  Anti-inflammatory drugs eat B vitamins, so I have to keep up with my B's, calcium, D and magnesium.  

I will eventually find an even keel.  Right now, work and studying are getting in the way.  I am trying to get walking on a consistent basis which should also help with the inflammation, I hope.  Also, the insurance company has my blood sugar is too well controlled so now I'm off of that medication until my bloodwork comes back out of whack.  It isn't as if it is controlled because I take my meds like a good little patient.  Insurance companies are the Devil!  Proffit mongering Sociopaths!

Right then, more to come.  I need to get home, cook dinner and play with my critters.  I need to remember to re-aim my bird feeder camera so I can see the birds better.  I should post some gratuitous squirrel but photos since they are bigger than my camera lens can focus on.  They look huge on that camera!