Okay, so it’s been more than three months since my last blahg.
It’s been a long haul. Most of my problems have been been health related and I think the struggles with my physical and mental health can speak volumes for themselves so I’m going to let them do the talking…I’ll just channel everything.
The last I spoke about my Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) my Doctor and a specialist didn’t think it was PMR. I was up and down with the Prednisone medication and my Doctor had put me back up again so they could ween me off and then the specialist could see if it came back and if he could figure out what this ailment is. None of that worked.
I’ve lost track of all dates and times but I do know the specialist didn’t get it right. I was taken off the Prednisone and all of the aches and problems came back and the specialist wasn’t sure why his plan hadn’t worked. What plan? In his odd estimation he thought I was fine and that I didn’t know I was fine because the Prednisone was masking me knowing I was fine and that once I was off the medication then I’d know I was fine. Follow the logic? Only, none of his logic worked! I was still in pain and had to go back on the Prednisone and he was going to refer me to another specialist in another city an hour away but not until November. My faith in the medical system waned.
I decided at that point to take things into my own hands. I researched the PMR and discovered that most medical sites said that people needed to be on a six month dose of Prednisone before things were close to being cured. So, I went back on the maximum dosage and continued that with the one refill I had left. That took me into September but then I couldn’t get another refill. My personal doctor was on holiday and the specialist didn’t agree that I should be on the Prednisone so I had to taper it off until it was gone. The last day I had of one pill, one quarter of the dosage I had been on, was September 24th. After that I began to take Naproxen, a pain medication which the specialist had prescribed as needed, and which didn’t work when he first prescribed it to me. Four days on the Naproxen and I was having numbness in my legs, arms, wrists, palms, and fingers, as well as a rash on part of my abdomen and back. A nurse colleague suggested I discontinue the Naproxen because it might be causing the rash and numbness.
Three days after discontinuing the Naproxen the pain and numbness was so bad I had to use a cane to get around and to help me get up from a sitting position. On the fourth day, I was so weak I couldn’t get out of bed. That was a Friday and my wife was already helping me get dressed and get around. The next day, Saturday, my wife was out all day and I felt like I was trapped in the house because I was so weak and couldn’t open doors or much else. When my wife came home about 3pm we made the decision to go back to the Emergency Room at Picton Hospital. It had been five months since I started my journey by going to the hospital in Picton the first time and being diagnosed with Myositis. Two weeks after than I had to go back and I saw Dr. Sarah LeBlanc who diagnosed me with PMR and put me on Prednisone. Surprise, surprise, when I went back to the Emergency in Picton this time, Dr. LeBlanc was the Doctor I saw again. She was very shocked to find me in the state I was in. I could barely walk, had numbness in all extremities, had little or no strength in legs and hands, and oh yeah, there was that rash. After a quick look at the rash, Dr. LeBlanc diagnosed that as Shingles. SHINGLES? WTF? In this case the WTF stands for what you think as well as WHAT’S THE FUTURE? What did this mean for me going forward?
Dr. LeBlanc was none too pleased to see the sorry the shape I was in and that my personal Doctor and the specialist I saw, who will remain nameless so I can protect his incompetence, 
had monkeyed with my medication increasing and decreasing like I was some yo-yo being shared among children. Essentially by not having a consistent dose of Prednisone over those five months my body had gone into shock and the Shingles were the result.
Long story short, Dr. LeBlanc put me back on the full strength of the Prednisone as well as a prescription to deal with the Shingles. The combination of both of those made me very tired and my boss insisted I take the week off work last week. The tips of my fingers also began to shed skin as a result of the two medications and I had to take sandpaper to my fingers every morning to remove all the loose skin. True story. Then I had to moisturize and moisturize again. Dr. LeBlanc also reviewed the specialist referral to the other specialist an hour away and agreed that I should continue with that appointment but that she was going to try and get it moved up because this newest specialist is a colleague of hers. So far, I haven’t heard about a change in appointment dates.
Dr. LeBlanc stil maintains I have PMR until someone says different and told me not to listen to any other Doctors except her until I see this other specialist next month. She also ordered blood-work and an MRI to see if the numbness might be caused by something else like a pinched nerve or some other issue in the neck or spine. Unfortunately the Prednisone ramps things up in your mind, more about that next, and I couldn’t do the MRI when they put me in that long tube like a coffin. I had to ask to be taken out. They rescheduled a new MRI for three days later and suggested a sedative. I called Dr. LeBlanc’s office and they prescribed the sedative and the second MRI was much easier with me much more relaxed. I haven’t had the results back on that yet.
So, onto the issue of the side-effects of Prednisone. This is where I hearken back to a previous blahg, P.M.R. where I parodied the PMR initials and this time will say that PMR could stand for Prednisone Mind Rage. The one thing I found about Prednisone, as I described earlier, is that it ramps thing up in your mind. Another PMR would be Profoundly Magnifies Results. Prednisone is a steroid and I found that it magnified little things in my mind so that I couldn’t ignore them and I stressed out about them more than I should have. The major problem was going to work and thinking everyone around me was stupid and then going home and rationalizing that it was the medication making me feel that way then going back to work and realizing people were still stupid and that they had learned nothing since the day before.
This all affected my interactions with co-workers because I knew that it was the medication causing these thoughts so I would turn away from people or leave the room so I didn’t snap at them about things that weren’t really happening. Of course I did that anyway because I didn’t have full control. I was able to keep it down at home. I was very quiet during those times unless I was discussing the stupidity of co-workers. Talk about mind-games. Give me 20 questions or hangman anytime. Probably not good examples because I probably couldn’t have made it past two questions without getting frustrated and the hangman image was probably what I wanted to do to those around me whom I thought were stupid…so just about everybody.
Eventually I had to tell my colleagues about the Prednisone and the side-effects and that it wasn’t them, it was me. Except I was still struggling with thinking it really was them. I worked harder at communicating with others so they knew when I was struggling and I believe before I went off the Prednisone last time, after being on it full strength for a month, I was able to separate out the stinkin’ thinkin’. I think now that I’m back on full strength Prednisone again, I can manage. This blahg will be the worst of it and having to share the issues I’ve had. Of course I reserve the right to think my Doctor and the first specialist are stupid but I have no such thoughts that way towards Dr. LeBlanc. Time will tell.
So, I want to move onto the next topic. The reference to More Polly Tics again is a hearkening back to a previous blahg “I Hates Polly Tics!” 
It’s election time again here in Canada, this time a Federal Election, with only days until we go the polls on October 21st to determine which party gets to govern Canada for the next four years. In that previous blahg, I described Politicians as so repetitive with their dribble and you get tired of hearing the same old promises over and over again. It’s like listening to a parrot with a tic. Now, I bet you get that Polly Tics reference this time or maybe you got it last time but it still holds.
During the time of past elections I have posted about the yellow sign I would put on my lawn not advertising who I would vote for but who I was not going to vote for. I have made it abundantly clear that I don’t trust the Conservative Party of Canada. This election is no exception other than the one exception that I won’t be voting for any of the parties. I just don’t think any of them deserve my vote.
The Liberals are the party currently governing Canada but they’ve made some missteps in the past year or so and the leader Justin Trudeau, doesn’t inspire confidence like he once did. The Conservatives and Andrew Scheer are not to be trusted and are hiding deep cuts for the future and are touting a playbook like the one Doug Ford sprung on us in Ontario and that was disastrous. Scheer and the Conservatives are also racist and homophobic. Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party and I had personal interaction about 15 years ago trying to book her as a speaker for an environmental conference. She acted like a rock star and had a number of demands that we found unreasonable so I remember that I don’t have faith in her. Jagmeet Singh is the leader of the New Democratic Party and he’s certainly exuding confidence and a surge in the polls. Unfortunately I would like him to make a stance against Bill 21, Quebec’s Secularism Law which is a ban on religious symbolism in the public sector. I believe a Federal government needs to get involved when a law such as that limits people and borders on racism. As for Maxime Bernier and his People’s Party of Canada, an offshoot from the Conservatives, they too are racist and should not get a single seat in government.
So where does that leave me and who to give my vote to? It’s obvious. No one deserves my vote. The only clear choice is to go the polling station, register, and then deny the ballot that is offered. This gets registered as a vote of No Confidence all of the parties and candidates. I’ve done it before but I didn’t think I’d have to do it this time. But, there’s five days left for me to change my mind or one of the leaders to change my mind. I don’t see that happening because they’re too busy mud-slinging and regurgitating the same clap-trap like that parrot stuck on repeat. I hates polly tics and I hates these politics even more. I do believe in the process but more people should realize that you don’t have to choose between bad or worse and the choice of denying the ballot is a real option. I’ll make it mine. In the end, I can crow about not electing in the party no matter who wins the elections…especially when it feels like no matter who wins, we all lose. Maybe that’s the Prednisone making Politics More Repulsive but I don’t think so.