Saturday, September 23, 2017

My Life


Mostly I've been driving back and forth to Fayetteville, keeping medical appointments with my kid, and trying to keep up with my teaching and committee work.

The news on that front looks hopeful: the current set of tests were much better than the last.

Luckily I finished what I hope is the final draft of Fault Lines (except for copy editing) before this happened, so at least I don't have to worry about that. I need to read it through once more, to catch any glaring errors and stupid plot moves, and then get it sent off. That will happen this week.

Meanwhile, I am catching up on reading student work, and finishing a book review. Also the committee from hell, which eats my life every year this time, is eating my life again. Another few weeks and that will let up a bit though.

The Kid is loving college, by the way, as we knew they would. They were born to go to college.





7 comments:

Bardiac said...

I'm so glad to hear your Kid's tests were better. I hope they're feeling better. And yay for loving college!

Contingent Cassandra said...

Just catching up. Sorry to hear they've been ailing, but glad the tests are looking better. And yes, yay for enjoying college!

delagar said...


Thanks, y'all!

Athena Andreadis said...

ANA is an inflammation marker, not necessarily a signal of autoimmune disease. Some medications cause the symptoms you described in an earlier entry (so does anxiety). But I'm glad to hear the test results are better, and I hope they do identify a root cause.

delagar said...


Athena -- The kid also had a positive smooth muscle antibody result. That's gone now, and all her liver function tests are in the normal range. The ANA is still high (1:160, speckled), but everything else looks good.

The liver guy was talking about maybe referring us to a rheumatologist. Does that sound right to you?

Oh, the kid also had blue, numb fingers briefly, but this was while they had a terrible virus (which I think might well have been the cause of all these abnormal blood results). The liver guy thinks that might be Raynaud's Syndrome.


Athena Andreadis said...

Going to a rheumatologist as the next step sounds right. Viral infections can certainly cause high ANA counts, so you may want to wait a month or so and repeat the test to see if the levels have subsided towards normal before you see the rheumatologist. Raynaud's syndrome is not curable, but it's eminently treatable with low-key methods.

delagar said...


Thanks, Athena!