I Got Patello-Femoral Syndrome for my Birthday

The day before my birthday I had an appointment to my orthopedist. I've been having trouble with my knees lately - they would randomly pop out of place causing a bit of pain. I thought it may be something related to Stickler's.

The doc diagnosed it as Patello-Femoral Syndrome. It may or may not have been related to the degeneration caused by Stickler Syndrome, but she seemed to think it was not. What it is is when the patella (or kneecap) doesn't slide smoothly in the groove of the thigh bone. The patella is held over the thigh bone by tendons. Damage to the tendons or muscles could be the cause. I think that mine has to do with muscle weakness as I haven't been walking as much as I used to. I also sit cross-legged a lot, and I think I overextend the tendons. That is just my theory.

Patello-femoral syndrome is more common in people with knock-knees, and in women because our hips are wider, thus our knees tend to bend inward. Me, being a knock-knee'd woman, is a double whammy. ;-)

Anyway, the doc prescribed a neoprene knee brace (I just got one to try it out first), these neat silicone wedges to put in my shoes - they are called M-Pact Multi-pads with Posting Orthotics, and physical therapy.

Here is a pic of my xray (not bad for a camera phone, eh? A little fuzzy from the hand shake but not too bad.) Notice how my knee caps are way over to the side:



Here are some useful links:
Health Encylopedia at USA Today
Description of Patello-Femoral Syndrome at Rice.edu
Entry at MedicineNet.com

It is possible to also repair PFS through surgery, if physical therapy and orthotics do not help. I think I'm far from needing surgery, but good to know the option is there. Here is a site that explains the procedure:
Knee Arthroscopic Surgery

Splenda Sickness

A couple of weeks ago, I had a big scare because I thought I was having a stroke. I had a pain running from the left side of my chest down my left arm. My fingertips tingled as if my hand was going to go numb. Not sure what to do, I looked up the symptoms of a stroke online. It said that the pain would be sharp, and the pain I felt was definitely NOT sharp, but rather a dull, pulsing ache. So I started thinking about what else might have caused it - any new meds I was taking? Nope. The only thing different with my routine is that I ran out of sugar, so I had Splenda with my tea. Hmm.

Doing a quick search of "splenda arm pain" brought up a ton of sites. It turns out that arm pain and tingling was only a few of a long list of side effects you can get from Splenda, aka Sucralose. A site mentioned that the chemical makeup of Splenda is a neurotoxin which made perfect sense once I read all the other side effects. After a half hour, I got other symptoms which were akin to food poisoning such as nausea, upset stomach, and muscle cramping.

Instead of rehashing all the details of Splenda sickness, I'm just going to provide some links. This site has an extensive list of symptoms. And even if you do not feel these severely, if you do use Splenda make note of how you feel afterwards. You might find that you do have symptoms and just never made the connection.
Splenda Sickness Blog

Another site with good info:
The Truth About Splenda

And to be fair, this is Splenda's statement regarding all the accusations. You can believe them if you want, and many people do not get sick from Splenda, but I can only speak from my experience.
Splenda Truth

Sleep-eating on Ambien

You might have heard in the news by now that Ambien, a non-narcotic sleep aid, has been linked to sleep-eating and sleep-driving. I can personally atest to that! My dermatologist prescribed Ambien because I wasn't getting any sleep due to the chronic itching from eczema. Before I had heard anything in the news, I started noticing that I'd wake up and find empty food container or wrappers in the living room. Once I saw them I could remember eating the food, but it was like recalling a dream.

Other times, I would actually be concious of eating, but my mind would be in the state of falling asleep. So I'd eat, black out a little, wake up a little, all the while eating. I remember feeling ravenous during those times. The strangest thing I ate was uncooked ramen noodles with chocolate milk powder on it!! Gross..

Even so, I didn't really see this as a problem. I stopped taking Ambien for other reasons - basically, I didn't want to be dependant on sleep-aids for a long time. I worried how it may effect my memory. It's non-narcotic thus not chemically addictive, but you can develop a psychological dependancy which I felt I was starting to become.

A few months after I stopped taking Ambien, the news started reporting sleep-eating and sleep-driving (which is 100 times worse.) So I just want to tell people - it's true, and please have a family member monitor you for a couple days to make sure it's not happening to you. If you do not live with anyone, set up a video camera. Hide your car keys at night (though I don't think this works as I've tried to hide food from myself before.) Have someone else hide your keys. Just be aware that this can happen, and be safe.

For more info, see these various articles from google search of "ambien sleep eating"

• http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ambien+sleep+eating

Looking Back: Thank You, Blood Donors

You know, with all the blood drives and commercials saying we need to donate blood, and how much is used a year, people don't hear much beyond that. They never know who gets their blood, what happened, and that sort of thing. But when you think about it, isn't it a strange thought?? Your blood coursing through someone elses body?

I know that when I had my scoliosis surgery several years ago, I wondered about the person who's blood I got. I wondered who they were, what drives them to donate - did they have a personal situation happen to a close friend? Or are they just generous and compassionate? I wondered if they were male, female, how old they were, do they have kids. What are their holidays like. :)

I am very thankful, whatever their reasons for donating, and whoever they are. I was to have 4 units drawn, but because I had breaks in my skin they would not take my blood because of possible contamination. So I used shelf blood - something I kind of felt bad about because that should be reserved for a serious emergency. But what can I do.

So whoever you are, I thank you. And since I never will know who you are, I must thank ALL of you because there's a .000000000000000000001 chance that it's you!

Please keep donating!

You Are What You Eat

Since my last entry, it's been about the same as far as tackling my autoimmune system problem. As usual, there are good days and bad days, not really any spectacular days. I've reached the point where all my meds are routine and my body has adjusted. So it's a good time to start something new.

You're body is only as good as the food you put in it. I have known this for a long time, but I always chose to ignore it. I'm a very picky eater. But it's about time I started paying attention. I've known that I'm allergic to a lot of foods, and have eliminated as much as I can from my diet. But I've never seen a professional about adjusting my diet, which I really should have done. If you eliminate something, it only makes sense you replace it with something of the same nutrients. I was not doing this, and I'm sure I am malnutritioned because of it. It just seems like a lot of work to find the right kind of doctor for this (I'm assuming that would be a dietician) and then explain all the things I can and can't eat, my health history, my long list of symptoms, etc etc. So I did some research on the web.

What I found was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. Someone to help me plan my meals. But it goes a step further. It's called The Tuesday Club, and they are there to help you with every kind of food intolerances (which I found out are different from food allergies) which a lot of people have but don't even know it. If you have problems digesting, or regular symptoms after eating certain foods like bloating or lethargy, you might have a food intolerance. The Tuesday Club has a 35 day program to help you find out what your intolerances are, and provide you with guidelines on what to eat and what to look for in ingredients. They have representatives who will answer your questions within 24 hours.

I am only on week 2, the easy part. Logging what I eat and how I react. Now comes the experimental parts. This should be interesting. I will report back how it goes!

Try a Natural Approach? ...again

Not much has changed the last 4 months as far as my immune system goes. I've added Paxil to my repertoire to ease anxiety, and I might have slight OCD. It seems to help - I don't pick at my skin aimlessly as much now. I did have problems with it causing night sweats - a side effect that was suppose to go away but it got worse. So I looked Paxil and night sweats up and found out that SSRI's (the category of drugs that Paxil belongs too) can cause hypoglycemia. One of the traits was night sweats, along with other things that I didn't realize were problems like craving for sugars, insomnia, irritability, nervousness, etc. If I don't do anything about it, I could end up with diabetes. I cut my does in half and change my eating habits. I cut the carbs, sugar, corn syrup, and added more protein. I'd like to see a dietician though because I'm sure I'm not eating a balanced diet. It's hard for me to follow conventional diets because I'm also lactose intolerant and allergic to half the foods out there. If I need to replace a food with something else to get the proper nutrients, more than likely I'm allergic to it. So no sugars, no dairy, no fruits, no grains - sheesh what the heck do I eat??

That will be what I tackle next. I do know that changing my eating habits for just a week made a really big change. I also stopped taking Ambien because there have been reports of sleep-eating and sleep-driving all over the news. I do sleep-eating - I'd wake up the next morning and find empty wrappers and such all over the place, with no recollection of eating anything at all. It freaked me out to see that other people were having the same problem (but on a larger scale, like this woman would eat in bed and her hubby had to shovel food out of her mouth lest she choke.)

And along with getting rid of one med, I added a healthy supplement - fish oil. Fish oil is a natural immune suppressant and anti-inflamatory, which is exactly what I needed for my skin. Maybe I can get off of the Azathioprene soon (since those were the same things I was taking it for.) I've taken fish oil for a week, 1 teaspoon a day, and have seen a big improvement. Fish oil is not for everyone though - anyone with high cholesterol should not be taking it.

Anyhoo, I highly recommend Carlson's Lemon Flavored Fish Oil, which I learned about from a friend. I had stopped taking fish oil pills before because I hated that you'd burp up fish flavor all day. GROSS. Now I burp up a pleasant lemon flavor. There's no fishiness at all to the oil, and you take it straight which is the best way to take it, so I hear.

Here are some links:

• SSRI's and hypoglycemia (halfway down this page)
  
• Sleep-eating on Ambien
  
• Fish Oil information
  
• Carlson Nutritional Supplements
  

And Yet Another...

Welp, Methotrexate didn't do squat for me, and my skin reverted back to how it used to be. The doc then put me on Azathioprene - another immunosuppressant - which I've been on for a month and a half now. Eh, it's kind of working. Maybe not as well as Cyclosporin, but maybe I'll clear up in time.