Health update on the lung thing {zzzzzzz}

The ovine greeting crew when I get home from work every day.  From left, Mungo, Minnie, and Trixie.  Mungo and Trixie are Minnie’s twins from 2014.

So it’s been a few months since my last health update. One reason, as you might have guessed, is that I’m doing better, for the most part. No need to kvetch when you’re feeling well.  The second reason is simply that it’s deadly boring to go on about your health issues, and (something I’ve mentioned here before) it feeds the “unwell” and gives it power. Your illness becomes your story, your story is who you are and how you identify yourself, and you get sicker. Then there’s the old “Attention Whore” aspect, as my delightful niece-in-law put it (she’s dealing with her own very serious health condition with grace and dignity, a great attitude and humor!). Enough already, you know? So I’ve blogged about topics that interest me more – the farm, the birds, my bees. But a few of you may have wondered, so I’ll try and be brief (a challenge for me, Verbosity Queen that I am) and update here.

Daisy reluctantly helping me test out my new sheep “deck chair” after I put it together. It’s  equipment to help me with sheep maintenance like hoof trims, vaccines, and worming.

First and foremost, I am seeing a new doctor. I went to see this doc as a “second opinion” type of thing back in October 2015, when I was doing well. Then,  just off 6 months of prednisone therapy and a dry, sunny summer, I felt fine, even great. Even so, seeing this pulmonary specialist in interstitial lung disease and a sarcoidosis specialist at the University of Washington (at my own request/initiation) seemed prudent. My higher self looking out for me, perhaps. It was a bit of a hassle to get there, which is why I hadn’t gone before, but my interactions with the pulmonologist I’d been working with so far hadn’t been reassuring or inspired trust.

The bees bearding on a hot summer night. Basically hanging out on the stoop where it’s cooler, just like you or I would. But without the cold beer.

The visit with the specialist went really well. I had a good rapport and she went over my records (illuminating me further on things that hadn’t been shared before). Since I was doing so well at the time, she suggested a recheck in six months (April 2016). Six weeks later, however, the symptoms returned. I wasn’t as bad as the year before, when all this first started (November 2014), but breathing easily was an issue again. So I went back to the original pulmonologist and had the worst appointment ever. I think if I had been hit by a bus on my way out of the clinic she’d have been happy to be rid of me for good. I wrote about it here, with a promise to update but I never did.

The junco’s nest I was watching in June/July.  Only one egg (of four) hatched, but the chick was gone within a week, likely a meal for a shrew.  The pair tried again in a new nest location, again with four eggs, but none of them hatched, though the female was diligent.  It looked like they weren’t fertile.  The cats invaded the nest (after it had been abandoned) and broke a few of the eggs – there was zero development.

I struggled along, dosing myself regularly with ibuprofen (3 tablets every 22 hours or so seemed to keep the inflammation manageable) and mostly feeling okay. If I didn’t walk fast, and anything physical was done with lots of breaks to stop and catch my breath, I managed okay. The best way to describe this is I feel like I’ve just run a 400-meter dash when all I’ve done is walk across the driveway to the garage. It’s not like asthma or other bronchial constrictions, where I can’t get enough air in physically, it’s more that when I do huff and puff, the oxygen isn’t making it to my bloodstream. Then, in February, everything came to a grinding halt with a ramping up of tasks and responsibilities at work, and accompanying high stress. The ibuprofen dosing wasn’t keeping up, even when I upped the frequency to every 12 hours. I called the specialist’s office. They set me up with a late March appointment, which sounded fine. A week later I was feeling bad enough (and, frankly, a little worried at how badly I was doing) that I called and asked if they could get me in sooner. My appointment was set for early March.

Farley, giving Daisy the stinkeye, complete with vocals, when she asked “You gonna eat that?” He was trying to save his for later and she already ate her three.

Daisy, after dust-bathing with the chickens.

I went in for a 1:00 appointment, thinking I’d be home by 3:00 or so, but it was after 6 p.m. before I got home that night. First the respiratory therapist come in for my walking test. He hooked me up to the oximeter and we began the six minutes of walking at the fastest speed I was comfortable with – I’d aced it back in October.  Within a few dozen steps he stopped me, thinking the oximeter wasn’t hooked up right and needed adjustment. I looked at the number showing and said blithely, “No, that’s right. That’s what it does.” (I monitor my blood oxygen and pulse rate at home.) It was reading low 80s at that point (which wasn’t as bad as it got while I was feeding the sheep or caring for the chickens). He seemed alarmed and said “You need to be on oxygen.” And stopped the test. “No,” I protested, thinking it was no big deal, “I can just walk slower, I don’t need oxygen.” He wasn’t having it and took me back to the exam room to wait for the doctor.

The male dark-eyed junco singing from the red huckleberry stump last month.  None of the songbirds are singing now – nesting season is over – so my  much loved Swainson’s thrush serenades are over until next May.

A few minutes later she came in and sat down.  After the initial greetings she said “I was thinking about you recently.” (Moi? I was more than a little surprised.) “You weren’t originally scheduled to come in today, were you?”

Well, this was a “You had me at hello” moment for me.  I saw her one time, five months previous, and if she even remembered who I was it would have been enough. This, though, had me glowing with a “you see me” warmth. “No,” I replied, “my appointment wasn’t for another two weeks, but I haven’t been doing well so I called to move it up.”  And off we went. I told her how I’d been doing, my symptoms, how they’d gotten worse, what I thought was going on (job stress), what was (or had been) working, etc. Then she told me how it was.

The fruit of a manroot vine (Marah oreganus) along the driveway, looking very Dr. Seuss-ian.  A Northwest native, the fruits are about the size of a plum, the “spines” soft and fleshy. It’s a relative to cucumbers and gourds.

First of all, the reason she’d been thinking of me is because she had another patient with symptoms very similar to mine, who was also a referral (i.e., also already diagnosed when she came in). Like mine, the other patient’s symptoms and tests didn’t add up and when they looked into it further they found that, no, this other patient didn’t have sarcoidosis but rather hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP).  Hmm.

So she ordered up all my slides and pathology from my previous doctor/hospital and planned to have the UW pathologists review them. And she recommended more testing. We did a CT scan that day.  The results showed no change from the one done a year ago (meaning no worse, which is a good thing, considering how poorly I felt). And she also ran some antigen tests. An antigen is a substance that your body reacts against, such as molds, dusts, and chemicals. Last year I requested allergy testing – partly to buy time (the previous doc only seemed to really want to do the bronchoscopy) – which is a different thing (IgE vs. IgG).  Everything on those allergy tests last year came back normal, which wasn’t a surprise, but it ruled out things I was worried about (the dogs and cats). I don’t have allergies, and only very rarely react to something I’ve eaten or in my environment.  Antigen testing though is testing to see if I had things I was reacting to via antibodies (proteins that your body creates in response to antigens). This, if you’ll remember, was more what I was thinking was going on back in February 2015. Specifically with moldy hay and a condition called Farmer’s Lung. There are many antigen variances of HP – farmer’s lung, bird fancier’s lung, wine grower’s lung, woodworker’s lung, etc., and I asked the doc about testing in the home (I’ve been very concerned about potential molds in the crawlspace) and she supplied me with a list of companies that tested for home toxins. This felt like real progress, for the first time in a year!

The flock is down to 10 and the freezer is full. The meat is excellent (from 4-year-old sheep).

And then she had me redo the walking test with oxygen. And I was a-mazed at the difference.  For weeks I hadn’t walked faster than a snail’s pace without running out of breath.  With the oxygen (turned up to twice the normal flow rate) I was almost back to a normal pace.  Wow!  It felt incredible! I guess they’re right {joking} But it unfortunately meant she wanted me to have oxygen at the house again. She was unimpressed with my fancy respiratory mask and the care I take (covering my hair, etc.) when feeding the sheep and insisted I get someone to feed them for me, and to keep my contact minimal. I understand her concern and insistence, but felt that until there was conclusive proof they were an issue, I would continue to take precautions and protect my breathing around the hay feeding.

Yay. Had this beauty in the bathroom for three months, though I only used it for about 10 days. A mere $600 out of pocket.

I used this exactly once, when I went out to the garage to feed the sheep. The doctor and respiratory therapist wanted me to bring it with me when I went shopping, or anywhere outside the home. Not. Gonna. Happen.

The bottom line is the doctor feels that I probably don’t have sarcoidosis – even the radiologist’s report of my CT scan last year had zero mention of this as a possible diagnosis. I remember my last pulmonologist discussing the diagnosis after the bronchoscopy procedure (an abbreviated visit, where the doctor was talking fast and was very short with me—because I was 10 minutes late, I guess—and indicating the results weren’t entirely conclusive as sarcoidosis but that’s what they were going with for my diagnosis and treatment. Wait, what? Ookay. (?!) But now, this specialist pulmonologist was taking the time to go the extra mile and do some actual research into my case, and ME.  Again, this felt incredible. (Before this, with the other doctor, I felt like I was the only one doing any research into my case.)  And with this research, plus the further testing , she felt the much more likely diagnosis was HP for me. This was a good thing. I think?

~ To be continued~

Gratuitous cuteness: Pal, in one of his rare moment of stillness (to be fair, he’s a doll in the house, calm and easy – it’s just outside that he runs and runs).  Note the gash under his eye, where he ran into a lone fencepost during a case of the zoomies.  He’s normally super agile, but it was dusk, and the fencepost is a leftover from fencing my vegetable garden  – ow! Heart this little guy!

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They say stress will kill you

I started this post over three months ago, and have been tinkering with it ever since, trying to find a single theme or focus and a way to wrap it up tidily. Instead it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. So I think it’s just going to be another multi-part post. Because I’ve got a blog and I’ve got something to say. Let’s get started.

The promise of spring on a chilly midwinter day. Don’t worry, I’m on my way, she whispers. 

They say stress will kill you, given enough time and enough stress. I’ve always considered myself to be a low anxiety, low key type of person, not easily ruffled, and nowhere near the stereotypical Type A personality one associates with chronic stress. And all of that is still mostly true, but I’m finding the stress is there, and yeah, it’s not the healthiest condition. I’ve been feeling lately like I’m turning into my mother, who was also a low key person, but as she aged, became someone whose anxiety could derail her. It was upsetting to hear during a phone conversation (she lived across the country from me), and not be able to help, or to see (during a visit) and become frustrated at her immediate redlining of anxiety and/or anger over seemingly minor things. Now I wonder if that these kinds of things aren’t totally under one’s control, and the aging process is a right bitch you have to get a handle on and ride to the end. But wait…

Several days of frost build up during a recent cold snap.

So I’ve been having a few epiphanies about stress and its role in my life. Until the past year, hell, until the past few months, I would have told you that I have little to no stress, am not the stressy sort, and other than a frustration or two during my day (say, a particularly crappy commute), I have no lasting stressors in my life and am not an anxious or tension-filled person. I am learning, via several avenues recently—epiphanies and research both—that I’ve been wrong for a long time. Maybe my whole life. Yes, I’m good at stuffing things, and keeping a calm demeanor. I am okay at letting some things roll off my back (or like to think I am). But still waters run deep, as they say. For many years (most of my life?) I’ve felt this could be my motto. I tend to run calm, stuffing stuffing stuffing, with the occasional acid-tongued blurt or outburst (which I regret nearly every time), until suddenly I don’t. Not healthy on any level.

I spy with my little eye.  Best destressor ever.  I adore this dog . {just throw it}

The constant undercurrent of anxiety has been detrimental to my health, as I found out last year. And a December visit to the pulmonologist and my breathing tests are all running at the same less than stellar numbers as they were a year ago, some even a little worse. The test is stressful for me, so I wonder if that alone affects how well I do, but the visits to the doctor are stressful as well. After the last visit, where we discussed my test results and the recommendations for treatment, I realized that this doctor has zero interest in my well being. It was obvious before—I’ve joked that she only sees me as a pair of lungs, and not even very interesting lungs—but for some reason you keep on expecting something. Or hoping for something. As she told me about the gnarly drugs used to treat sarcoidosis, and my options therein, I broke down a little. I bowed my head to collect myself, and when I rose it to speak, voice quavering a bit, the doctor’s face was a blank wall. There wasn’t an ounce of compassion or caring there, just a clinical detachment and, as a result of this blank wall, the gift of my Aha moment – if your doctor doesn’t care about you, then stop going to see him or her. (Note: I didn’t expect anything special over my being upset, just an acknowledgement that it was affecting me.)

Zombie sheep, waiting for me to feed them one evening after work. Will my eyes glow like this if I go on the sarcoidosis drug?

I took the 15 page printout she gave me about the medications she discussed home with me to read over. I’ve tried to read it all objectively, since I am not really interested in going on a chemotherapy drug (though at much lower doses than for cancer patients) that requires regular blood testing to make sure my liver isn’t being damaged by it, nor having every vaccine known given or boosted (because my immune system will be shut down by the drug). And because I’m not feeling at all confident in this doctor’s interest in my health (and will not continue with her regardless) and can’t imagine being on such a hardcore treatment under her supervision, I’ve kind of gone off the rails. Just so it’s clear, I believe the doctor’s knowledge, experience, and treatment protocol are solid, but I just can’t continue with a doctor who has repeatedly shown me she doesn’t care about me. Sorry. I know I sound like a big baby, but there are statistics to back up my feelings (more on this later). There really isn’t any gentle treatment for sarcoidosis, and most treatments involve steroids or chemotherapy drugs or anti-malarial drugs. And running in the background is the “ it often goes away by itself” noted on nearly every website search I’ve done (and indeed, was told this by my doctor early in the diagnosis process). What to do, what to do.

And lo, the path appeared. I happened upon a book whose title has been on a stickynote sitting on my nightstand for months (close to a year?). Something else I was reading at some point brought this title to my attention and it sounded interesting so I wrote it down. Finally, while doing some cleaning I saw it again, sticking out from under my alarm clock, and sat down on the bed and ordered up an ebook version from the library. Within the first 10 pages I realized I found something special, and maybe even the key to getting on track with real healing, not just treating to abate symptoms.

Pretty much.

And this book led to another book. And then another couple of books came across my radar, and another, and suddenly I’m awash in research, none of it about sarcoidosis specifically, but about healing in general and healing myself in particular. And when I say healing myself, I’m not just talking about the sarc. I’m going down the rabbit hole to figure this stuff out once and for all. Because I can’t spend the rest of my life in a slow decline, feeling bad about myself, becoming smaller instead of better, and worst of all, never becoming who I’m meant to become. Never doing what I’m meant to do as I stay “safe” and afraid. This shit is real, and I’m diving in. Hang on! Because:

 

Woman cannot live on chicken and watermelon alone {or can she?}

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’m not even kidding.

I’ve been calling it my roast chicken fetish, and I’ve roasted and eaten a LOT of birds in the past six weeks. For a while there, over the winter, I wasn’t eating much of anything because nothing sounded good.  Lack of appetite was just one of the grab bag of auxiliary symptoms I had, the primary one being not being able to breathe.  The weight loss was okay; I’ve worked harder to lose less, but sometimes I’d get hungry and would go to the grocery only to come home with things (comfort food) that didn’t taste nearly as good as they sounded. Root beer floats worked for a bit, but after a while I was down to cereal and milk, and even then didn’t finish the bowl (unheard of for me). If one of my animals went off their food to the same degree I’d be in a minor panic but for myself it was just “huh.”

Hanging out on a sunny spring day with my best guy.

About a week before my bronchoscopy I was at the grocery and got some roast chicken at the deli counter. It was actually pretty good and satisfying. The day of my bronchoscopy I had some lemonade and watermelon at Whole Foods.  That was good too. The day after my bronchoscopy I was in pretty rough shape, with deep, um, productive coughing, with said production laced with fresh blood (normal after the biopsy procedure, but still disconcerting). I sounded like a 3-pack-a-day smoker, and felt like I’d been pummeled, weak and tired. There was nothing to eat in the house – I’d stopped buying food because most of it would go bad – and I was hungry. Lemonade and watermelon sounded good. So did protein and fat. I got dressed and made myself presentable (barely), and went to the nearby grocery for a rotisserie chicken. And some watermelon. And some lemonade.

Yum.

That was six weeks ago and I’ve eaten a LOT of chicken in the meantime. Instead of buying the hot, rotisserie birds at the grocery, I started roasting my own. I fill the cavity with chopped garlic cloves and a couple teaspoons of Celtic sea salt, rub the skin with butter or olive oil, sprinkle another couple teaspoons of salt, plus some thyme and paprika, and pop it into a hot oven (400 degrees) for an hour or so.  When it comes out I’m salivating and barely able to wait for it to cool. I’ve found that wings are my favorite part. They have just the right combo of skin/fat/meat. Because the skin and the fat? Well, the embarrassing truth of it is that’s the part I think I crave the most. I’ve learned that the skin is best when hot and crispy from the oven, so I eat most of it then. It’s kind of gross when I think about it too much. Prior to this, I don’t think I’d purchased chicken in a year or more, other than a breast or two (bone-in) to make soup stock. But now? I’ve eaten a good sized flock, with no end in sight. We’re getting the first watermelons up out of Mexico now, so they’re a little easier to find (I was buying the plastic packs of cut up watermelon and trying to rationalize the price by the fact that I wasn’t eating much else). And copious numbers of Cuties have been eaten (and I’m not a citrus person in general). I’m sad that it’s the end of Cutie season. Gallons of lemonade have been guzzled; I buy Santa Cruz organic lemon juice, add a little water and a squirt or two of stevia and bam!  {this sounded so good now I just made a glass of it}

Today’s prescription: a day of PTO/work from home, where this was the view from the office. Hashtag healing.

This all has been weird and wild and I figure just part of the healing process. I’m glad to be eating normally (well, not normally, but normal quantities) and while I hesitate to talk about my sarcoidosis from a woowoo standpoint – I don’t want to give it more power or “become” my diagnosis—I also know I have to acknowledge it and not tra-la-la it away. I’m all about magical thinking, but denial does no one any good. I know this whole sequence of events and diagnosis (and the more I read, the more I realize it didn’t just appear out of the blue; it required the exact sequence of events to occur) has to be addressed. This is something I have to look in the eye and understand before I can bid adieu. Scram. Get lost. You’re not welcome here. I’m feeling better physically than I was a mere two months ago (but not as good as I was feeling one month ago, dammit) and being able to walk and breathe at the same time has been an eye opener to how ill I was for a while there. Somehow as you go through it you just cope and don’t really examine it too much.

For now I’m still under the influence of prednisone, a steroid of course, that, while it’s helped me to achieve that walking and breathing thing that’s not to be taken lightly, kind of messes with me otherwise, and I’m not liking it much. Scatterbrained, irritable, and a general feeling of discontent. Other things like appetite changes and sleeping changes are less noticeable. I get really hungry when I get hungry, and I feel like I’m not sleeping as well – this one is hard to describe – but mostly doable. The feeling of overall frustration or dissatisfaction, tinged with a dollop of hopelessness is making for a sour stew, though, and I’m having a hard time getting beyond it. I can distract myself out of it, a good thing I guess, but the concentration needed to turn it around is in short supply. Concentration on anything is absent, it seems. A TV program, a book, a task, it’s hard to stay with anything for very long. I find this supremely frustrating, because I need to work on getting rid of the sarcoidosis once and for all, and not just rely on the palliative effects if the prednisone. So far the benefits have outweighed the side effects, though I don’t anticipate this will be for much longer. I need to heal, and find my bootstraps to do so.

The clean up crew after some heavy duty pruning with my pole pruner.

I also know part of all of this discontent is the annual spring/summer thing I go through, where I see all the things that need to be done, or that I want to do, and wonder when I’m ever going to make the leap to what I really want to be doing. Right now giving my property a haircut is first and foremost. In the five years I’ve been here, the trees have continued to grow, and grow well. They would happily take over the property if left to their own devices. Take it back, I guess, since it’s obvious they once ruled supreme. Someone carved out some space for sky years ago, and left enough trees in place that the sky is once again receding under the canopy. It’s almost claustrophobic at this time of year, when the jungle-growth is rampant. I’ve been letting the sheep out regularly and they’ve managed to gobble up almost all of the normal undergrowth like a herd of wooly locusts. The grass around the house looks like a putting green and still the pasture languishes. I purchased a pole pruner – cordless, because I don’t do gas engines – which is basically a baby chainsaw on a stick. After taking a chainsaw introduction class a couple of years ago I realized very quickly I wouldn’t be buying a chainsaw (too dangerous for me). This is a way to have the tool but safer to use (it would be really hard to chop your hand or leg off by accident) and I’ve been having fun trimming and pruning. The only problem now being I really, really need a chipper.

Gratuitous cuteness: A cluster of baby orb weaver spiders (garden spiders), newly hatched. So adorable!

And the winner is… {part 3 of 2}

This horse race call has been going through my head for the past week.  I hear Chic Anderson calling it.  “And they’re off! Asthma breaks with an early lead, with Flonase in the saddle. Then it’s Hypersensitivity Pneumoitis, with Farmer’s Lung aboard. Two lengths behind is Interstitial Pneumonia and trailing way behind are the longshots in the field, Sjogren’s Syndrome and Lupus. As they round the first turn Asthma has fallen to the back of the pack and pulled up. He is not a contender. In the backstretch now, Hyerpsensitivity Pneumonitis is pulling ahead; Farmer’s Lung letting him have his head.  And from out of nowhere here comes Autoimmune Disease with Sarcoidosis on board! He’s running like a freight train! As they come around the final turn, it’s Autoimmune and Sarcoidosis nosing ahead! Farmer’s Lung is giving Sarcoidosis a run for his money! Down the stretch they come!”

It doesn’t look like it will be a photo finish, but I’ll find out in two days who wins the race, according to the medical community, when I get see my pulmonologist to get the results from my bronchoscopy last week.

For weeks, now months, I’ve been dealing with this “lung thing.” And aside from the debilitating effects on my daily routine, and outright crappy days with pleurisy, fever, zero appetite, and skull-cracking headaches, it’s been mostly invisible to others. I’m good with that. And while I pride myself with not making this my story from the get-go (public blog posting aside – ha! – my co-workers and others mostly were unaware until after my bronchoscopy last week, where I had to take a couple days off and came back to work with a deep, hacking cough from the biopsy and lavage procedures), I also sought medical help within 3 weeks of my first symptoms and didn’t wait around for it to get better on its own. I have an overall aversion to doctors and the need for medical care, but I knew there was something more serious going on and waiting was not prudent. A lot of farmer’s lung sufferers believe it’s just a bad cold they’ll get over, and delay treatment (which can then cause permanent scarring to the lungs), but when you can’t catch your breath it gets acute quickly, so I didn’t screw around.

My good eater girl: Daisy’s getting so positively chubby that I feel like I should get a curly tail for her.

As someone who lives with animals, I totally get and agree with the typical animal response to illness or pain: don’t let anyone know and don’t call attention to yourself (I know, the blogging publicly aside is ironic here) you’ll be targeted/more vulnerable. Of course with the prey animals (birds, sheep) this mindset is more acute, but even my carnivores are stoic in the face of these weaknesses. It’s not very helpful to me as their caretaker to not have an obvious sign to go with, and can make for some “back from the brink” saves when they don’t let you know until they’re so ill they’re no longer able to hide it. So it takes observance, and a daily familiarity with their habits and behaviors, to know if something’s not quite right. A little testiness with others, or a quieter than usual demeanor, or the holy grail for the dogs: off their feed (red alert!) and the sheep: separating themselves from the herd (don’t panic yet, but hovering rightthere).

Lorna and her babies; these two lambs were probably the only reason she pulled through after a very difficult assisted birth.

For me, I’ve found I’ve had all of these symptoms: less patience, less social and more isolation from others, off my feed (sure I have reserves, but for a Finn–we’re good eaters–to go off their feed is major stuff!). Less patience with the prima donna project managers at the office; the ones who think you’re sitting at your desk drying your nails, just waiting for them to unload their project with the impossible deadline on your desk. No, actually, I have six other project deliverables I’m working on, thanks though. This is always great when it’s followed by some version of adult business-civil temper tantrum. Drop everything and make my Most Important Project your priority. Yay. Normally I can shrug these off, and even laugh at them. Lately I’ve found myself snapping at them and their ridiculous expectations. Oops.

Yeah, you maybe should back off.

But it’s winding down to the diagnosis now; and the autoimmune factor is coming to the forefront, which is okay. Sarcoidosis is something I can work with, and have good hope that with some mitigation I’ll be as good as new by the end of the summer. I also believe, though I doubt I could get anyone in the medical community to agree, that this wasn’t just a long-time-coming diagnosis, but a progression of several of the horses in this race, including the starting gun: the tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis vaccine I got two weeks before my symptoms started. I’m still kicking myself for agreeing to that (my cat had accidentally (not aggression-related) scratched my ear open to the cartilage). My last booster was less than 10 years ago, but the doctor felt this was a risk (and was my cat vaccinated? – what do feline vaccines have to do with a scratch?).

And because I do believe that Farmer’s Lung is still a concern, I purchased this attractive accessory for feeding the sheep and chickens. It’s hugely helpful and protects my lungs from dust and mold. Yaasss.

With this depression of my immune system, a the constant puff of fine hay dust and mold spores while feeding the sheep had just the opening they needed, and Farmer’s Lung strolled in the door and settled in for a stay. Then, as I gasped through January and February, feeding and caring for the beasts as I struggled to get a breath, my body working hard to keep up with the demands of my daily chores, the autoimmune factor opened up (I already have one autoimmune disease – Hashimoto’s thyroiditis – and they say once you have one…) and Sarcoidosis came in the door I left open in my negligence. I know this is probably irrational hooey and makes no sense scientifically to anyone with a medical degree, but a weakened immune system is huge. It’s like putting out the welcome mat for all kinds of detritus. Being basically healthy and from good sturdy stock, my only fault being not getting enough sleep (and the incredible restorative powers therein), I’ve learned a valuable lesson to take me through the next half.

Love this dog to bits!