New Rheumy, Chilblains, & Test Results

Thankfully my primary care doc was able to make me an appointment with the other local Rheumatologist (Dr S).  It wasn't much help with the flare up of my autoimmune disease that I was having at the time because by the time the appointment rolled around, my hands were back to "normal."  The flare lasted about a month and was awful.  But fine, he did see me.

He seems like a good doc.  Not the warm, friendly type but seems to know his shit about autoimmune diseases and hasn't come off as knowing nothing about EDS so I'll take it.  I explained about the extremely painful lumps I got on my fingers right before the flare up went to town and he thinks that I had chilblains.  Chilblains!  Shit!  Oops.  Apparently they are not uncommon for people with Raynaud's and that I need to keep warmer and use warm water, NOT HOT, to bring my hands back to life when they go all white and corpse-y.  Eek!   ...I will also completely stop my practice of squeezing the blood back up into my fingers when they take too long to come back.  My bad.

He had me run bloodwork since I hadn't had an autoimmune workup since going on plaquenil.  And I just got the results at my follow up and they're all good!  Woohoo!  All specific CTD markers were negative and even my ANA titer was only 1:160, down from my last 1:320 and way down from my initial 1:1280.  It's basically normal which Dr. S is typical when going on a drug that suppresses the immune system like plaquenil. 

In the next coming months, he wants to see how I do with halving my dose of plaquenil which to quote him, "Is a great drug...other than making people go blind."  So I go down on my dose in about 2 months.  He also gave me some prednisone to take in a small burst if I have another flare up so I won't be stuck on my own with nothing to help me.  Which is awesome.

Then there's this whole other thing with my insurance company that just NOW decided to tell me that they don't cover pre-existing conditions.

"But you sound young so that's probably not a problem for you."

Ahahahahhaahahhhahahhahaha.  Funny story.  About that.  WTF!!!???  So now I'm running around trying to get that waived.  Which is, in fact, so stressful for me that I can't even blog about it because I will just start crying again.  So that's that.