Having now completed three days of treatment, I'm still seeing little-to-no improvement in the gastroparesis symptoms. Tuesday's crushing fatigue subsided with a decent (more or less) night's sleep, but I'm not exactly peppy these days.
It's good for me to be busy because then I don't notice how crummy I feel -- a sign that my symptoms are not bothersome enough, for the most part, to get in my way. Wednesday I completed my last assignment, wrote up my study guide, and took the final exam for my ESL class. Today I ran around and looked at a bunch of potential investment property and did several other errands as well. By five o'clock I feel like collapsing but don't, and then I get a second wind and find myself staying up, alas.
Eyes are dry, tummy hurts, RA is kicking up and that weird flank pain comes and goes. I'm still trying to discern whether or not it's muscular. I have figured out a stretch that seems to help, which points towards a muscularity issue. (The main problem is that my core remains weak in spite of all the exercising I do.) I've decided to just let all this apparent auto-immune stuff go until after the holidays. Two reasons: 1) I don't want to deal with it (maybe it will resolve on its own) and 2) diagnosis isn't going to change anything, since treatment involves using appropriate products to keep everything ... moist. Eye drops, saline nasal spray, Biotene dry mouth toothpaste, mouthwash, mouth spray, etc. It's a bit ridiculous, and if I thought there were any treatments that went to the root cause and didn't just try to alleviate symptoms, I would be at the doctor's tomorrow. Perhaps I should be less pessimistic. Weight's down around 138 in spite of eating things like Dark Chocolate Covered Shortbread Star cookies from Trader Joe's. Overall I can't eat too much at any given time because then I feel really horrible, even with the medication. I'll give it a few more days at this dosage before I try doubling. (I was given the option of 1 or 2 tablets before meals and bedtime, so far I'm just using one.)
I've got laundry in the dryer, which sounds like it's about to give out at any moment. It may be time to bite the bullet and get new machines. Our current set is about 12 years old and I do experience twinges of guilt whenever I use it, since I know that the newer machines are much more water- and energy-efficient. Any impulse towards shopping for new ones has so far been stifled by the realization that the old ones still work, so why go to all that expense? It's that thought process that will someday leave me with a broken down washer/dryer and piles of laundry accumulating. It really shouldn't take 2 hours to dry one load of laundry.
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