Lupey Lauren

Welp, as some of you may know, Lauren has been struggling on and off with a barrage of weird symptoms like fatigue, joint pain and swelling, muscle pain, chest pain, hair loss and rashes...just to name a few.  It seemed to start right around the time that she miscarried her second pregnancy (between Blake & Wyatt).  Anyway after completing the gauntlet of doctor's visits over the past couple years with her general practitioner, rheumatologist, endocrinologist, dermatologist and neurologist, we've reached a diagnosis of moderate systemic lupus erythematosus (what most people mean when they just say lupus).  The criteria the rheumatologist used to make the diagnosis are:  photosensitivity, oral ulcer, arthritis, positive antinuclear antibody test, chest pain, malar rash (lupus "butterfly rash") and a punch biopsy of the skin that showed 3 of the 5 proteins that can be seen in lupus (which alone equates to about an 86% chance of having the disease).  So, we're pretty comfortable that the rheumatologist is correct, not to mention the fact that Lauren's Grandpa Brune had lupus.  Some recent blood work showed that Lauren's CK levels were really high, so she just finished up with the neurologist today.  After the EMG, we are happy to report that there is no muscle or nerve damage - YAY!!!  He did tell Lauren that she has the beginning of carpal tunnel, though...good to know, but that's the least of our worries ;)  Lauren will probably be on plaquenil for life and is taking azathioprine, meloxicam and a 20 day dose of prednisone to try to get this current flare down.  We should be able to eventually omit most of those meds...here's hoping anyway.  The rheumatologist kept expressing that the quicker we could get the disease activity down the better off things tend to go, so that's why we're treating it a little on the aggressive side right at the moment.  Good news is that all is going pretty well for now, and the prednisone has seemed to take nearly all of the pain and swelling away.  Sorry to get the word out this way, but since the blog is sort of like our kids' baby books (we have them printed off...it's pretty cool, actually); it's a great way for us to document the information for them to have.

We sure wouldn't just post some crappy medical information, so here's the good stuff...

Wyatt practicing walking

 Princess Blake

 Wyatt hooping it up

 Our cute little man who happens to be 15 months old today.