Improvements...

Hi everyone

I noticed a few improvements in my condition over the weekend, so I thought I'd let you all know!

Firstly, on Saturday morning, Jamie (my fiance) and I were up at 6.30am because Jamie had work. Usually when Jamie works at the weekend, he drives me home because I don't have time for my steroids to kick in before I have to drive. However, this weekend I managed to drive home 15 minutes after getting up without too much discomfort! I'm not saying it was a pain free drive, but certainly bearable, which is a huge improvement. This got me thinking that maybe I don't need to wake up at 5am to take my steroids anymore... The past two days I have taken my steroids at my normal wake up time of 6.30am and have managed to drive to work okay. So no more 5am wake up calls!!!

Secondly, after getting home, having my breakfast and catching up on Friday night's Children in Need Show (I recorded it so I just watched certain parts) I decided that I would go for a walk. My dog isn't very well at the moment, and Jamie still at work, so at 10.30am I set off walking on my own with only my iphone music for company. I didn't have a planned route or time to walk, I just went where my feet took me. I was quite surprised when I walked back through my front door to see that it was 12pm and I had been walking for an hour and a half!

I took this picture of the Abbey on my walk, how pretty does it look?!

I felt great after my walk! Admittedly my feet were a bit sore and my legs were ready for a sit down, but all in all the fresh air and exercise left me feeling awake and energised. After so long of hardly being able to do anything, it is so nice to finally become more active again. Im looking forward to my next walk now!

My third improvement is I have decreased my steroids again by 2.5mg, so I am now on 12.5mg. Each time I decrease, for the first few days I feel slightly more pain in my joints, but then it starts to get better again. I think this is because my body needs a few days to adjust to the new level of steroids. Im going to keep decreasing them by 2.5mg every few weeks until I am either in pain again or hopefully, until I am off them completely. Fingers crossed its the latter!

The only slight disappointment is my index finger still shows absolutely no sign of improvement. It is still swollen and I still cant straighten it or use it for anything. Maybe my next dose of MTX tomorrow will start to help.