COMPLICATED

Complicated...it's JUST a word. According to one of the definitions in the

Merriam-Webster Dictionary it means "difficult to analyze, understand, or explain"...yet it is a word the two

Holmes

girls have heard far too frequently.  For me, Lin, my most recent confrontation with that word came...just yesterday.

Since I first discovered my brain was not fried during the eleven years of my marriage, I found, to the amusement and relief of many of my professors, I'm an

avid researcher. Give me a topic, move aside and I'm off and running.

Right before my first move down here to the land of

Southern Belles and Mint Juleps...though I've yet to see a Southern Belle in her fluffy skirts twirling her parasol, nor have I been offered, let alone tasted a

Mint Julep...but I digress...right before hopping past the Mason-Dixon Line, my hands swelled up and the pain was beyond bearable. A quick visit to the AMA's answer to vampires, and a

couple tubes of blood lighter followed by a rather intense injection of steroids into my right thumb...

(did you know you are not allowed to move said thumb for thirty minutes after the needle is inserted into your thumb? and you can just forget trying to staunch any blood spurting like a

mini Old Faithful...you MUST stay still.)...

the diagnosis came. Wonder how many vamps it took to drill my veins one after another until one actually succeeded in not sailing right through my baby veins and they got enough blood to let me slink away and pass out?

Rheumatoid Arthritis...BUT since I'd be curtseying like

Scarlett O'Hara past her precious Ashley when I sauntered past my familiar


Mason-Dixon Line, so it was decided to wait until I got down here before seeking out the

{drumroll} specialist and bring out the prednisone...a rather nasty oral steroid with some vicious side effects...but side-effects aside, it DOES put the brakes on some of the worst flare ups of the RA.

A full year has passed and yesterday the RA specialist looked at me with encouraging eyes as he told me the vampires he'd sent

me to (this was back before my back decided I needed to spend a few months crawling last December)  discovered I have an AGGRESSIVE form of RA and we need to get to work on it.

Okey Dokey. I was looking forward to getting the RA under control and becoming acquainted with RA remission.

I'm aggressive...or my RA is, but he was confident..until he started asking me about my

cough...oh and yeah the

Shingles I had about three years ago I still get sharp pains from even though the rash is gone...Key the

swaggering hero word...

COMPLICATED came soaring in on it's rope, its cape fluttering in the breeze, it's sword aimed for...yep, my spirit.

There are people walking around out there...here...and I guess everywhere with RA who

don't have a clue...and more to the point DOCTORS don't have a clue.

I have had a cough some of the top pulmonologists on the eastern seaboard have never been able to figure out...we're going on almost 20 years now...every

CT scan,

x-ray, and

MRI I've had over the years gets everybody in a "CANCER" uproar because I have

nodules floating around in both my lungs. 15

bronchoscopies where my lungs and I have starred in videos the AMA replays like I'm a starring feature in some macabre theater revival...(I wanted to charge admittance the last time I had one...talk about live entertainment...with ME the entertainment)...removes the threat of anyone packing me off to the nearest hospital and a new round of chemo and radiation. (Been there, done that, twice, but not for the lungs.)

I'm COMPLICATED, like fractal art...I may be one of the rare patients who develops RA the mainstream medical world doesn't know squat about...Instead of the RA attacking the joints first...it attacks the internal organs. Lucky me.

A week ago I had to beg my primary to give me enough prednisone to get through a week because prednisone is a nasty drug...As of yesterday the RA doctor increased my daily dosage, and prescribed something I will need to add an eye doctor to my increasing battery of specialists my

Complicated self is going to need to battle RA with because this med could cost me my eyesight.

Complicated. I'm one of six people in the world who has the kind of hole in my upper left lung that I have...THAT made me complicated when the first bronchoscopy back in the 1990's found it.  And now I'm

COMPLICATED AGAIN!

Neither Kat nor I WANT to be

complicated...Is there somewhere we can go and withdraw from this club? It's beautiful in fractal formulas, but it's a BITCH in real life!