At Long Last, The Meeting With Dr. T

Yesterday morning, I finally had my appointment at UAB with my new rheumatologist, Dr. Trojanowski.

 I met with him and his fellow, Dr. Neely, and they spent about an hour with me.

If you aren't familiar with what a fellowship is, after a doctor has completed their residency and practiced on their own for awhile, they may choose to do a fellowship for two years in a specialty that they want to become board certified in.

Both Dr. T and Dr. Neely were really approachable, great listeners, and excellent when it comes to explaining their thought process and discussing our options. I felt very comfortable with them.

After taking a through history and examining me, we discussed the treatment plan I have been under, and it seems that several parts of it have been doing more harm than good.

Over the next few months, we will be working towards coming off of the prednisone (Thank God!) and some other meds as well.

We will be keeping the Plaquenil (so I'll never get Malaria - hehehehe) and have increased the Methotrexate (the chemo drug) to the maximum dosage and changed it to an injection that I will give myself once a week.

Changing over to the injection will allow me to get all of the medication (instead of losing 30% of it in the GI tract) and also hopefully reduce some of the GI side effects.

To decide which biologic to add, some additional testing was needed.

Where my previous rheumatologist never did any xrays, Dr. T did 30 at this visit, in addition to drawing 13 vials of blood for labs.

I will go back in three weeks and, based on all these results, learn if we will be adding another injection or an infusion.

I am much more comfortable with Dr. T managing my care and I am confident that we will find the best course of treatment.

For now, I have just given myself my first Methotrexate injection and am beginning to experience the chemo sleepies so it is nap and blankie time for me.

Here's hoping today's side effects are minimal!

Happy Wednesday, y'all!