After a few days of feeling like crap and adjusting to the damp grey overcast blahness of winter in the UK I had the pleasure of meeting with my consultant Dr Marshall and being prescribed a new painkiller. It works but I feel like I am surrounded by a huge marshmallow and completely disconnected from myself. I have fought and fought against going onto steroids as the consequences later far outweigh the benefits. So I am waiting to go on a trial of a new medication called Requient. This is specifically aimed at renal function because if I pick up a cold or infection from someone or somewhere it immediately goes to my kidneys and now one kidney is not functioning so well. Luckily who ever designed us gave us two kidneys, two ears, two eyes, two lungs and probably two of something else so if one kidney fails I will be okay but of course the scary bit is 'what if two kidneys fail?' or the lupus starts attacking other vital organs. I always thought I was going to die of boredom!
Riquent has been developed to specifically treat lupus renal disease by preventing or delaying renal flares, a leading cause of sickness and death in lupus patients. It has also been studied to assess whether Riquent treatment improves proteinuria, as was observed in previous clinical trials. Proteinuria is an indicator of abnormal renal function.
Riquent has been well tolerated in all 14 clinical trials, with no overall difference in the adverse event profiles for Riquent-treated patients compared with placebo-treated patients.
Riquent specifically reduces circulating levels of anti-dsDNA antibodies and is also designed to specifically suppress the B cells that make these antibodies. Decreases in these antibodies are believed to be associated with a decreased risk of renal flare. Although clinical benefit has not yet been proven, Riquent treatment has significantly reduced these antibody levels in all clinical trials in which they were measured.
Whatever.
Anyhow these photos cheered me up. An evening with Grania in Umgeni. Hubbie wearing my pyjamas and doing the washing up (we came back from France to a wonderful freshly painted kitchen) and sitting by the fire at Umgeni. There is nothing like a fire to distract me from grey damp days.
Fire is always something with which I am careless. I almost burned this house day with a Yankee candle and a roller blind, was forever setting the chimney on fire in our other house, threw a lighted match in wastepaper bin in an office (they days when I used to smoke and smoking was allowed anywhere) and set fire to a Hoover sucking up, what I thought to be cold embers, in the morning. I am sure there have been other incidents but at the moment I cannot recall them.
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