Decisions, Decisions.....

So, the rash is back.  I don't know if it is THE  rash of 2015 but it is A rash and it's looking ugly.  The Rash of 2015 was positively legendary.  It covered every part of my body, front and back, top to bottom.  My doctors still talk about it.  I had that rash for almost 6 months!  My face blew up so big that my eyes were swollen shut.  It was a bad time and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

A few days ago I noticed the rash on my stomach returning. Then I noticed a little bit of it on my legs.  There's also a little bit of it on my forearms and hands.  And my husband alerted me to rash behind my ears and under my chin which which has been inching its way up to my face...just a bit.

And then there are my hands.  They hurt.  And my hips.  Oh and my neck and clavicles.  Not at all like the crippling joint and muscle pain I had previously.  That was The Inflammation of 2015.  LOL!

This week is chemo week so my doctors see me every day.  They see my rash progressing.  They see that I'm in a little pain from inflammation. I had a slight fever and felt so ill this morning that I was late to chemo.  Naturally they are concerned.  My transplant is scheduled for the 2nd week in September which is a long way off.  I planned it that way so that I could spend the summer with my kids and be there when my son starts his new middle school.  However, my doctor thinks we should now do it sooner.

"Despite rather aggressive management of your auto-immune issues, we are not really managing them at all.  I have some concerns that between now and September, the next issue you have may not be as benign as an all over body rash or crippling joint pain.  I'm specifically concerned about the vasculitis you had in your neck a month or two ago...what if something like that came back or worse?I'm not trying to scare you but it could complicate your transplant."

Crap.  Not what I wanted to hear.  Part of me thinks he is over-reacting.  The other part of me thinks I am being willfully blind to the dangers of waiting.  To complicate matters, my sisters planned and paid for a "family reunion" in July with all my brothers and sisters and all of their kids.  I am not going to miss that.  So I figured a happy medium would be to have the transplant at the end of July, after our family vacation.

In the meantime, I will just have to pray that the rash doesn't progress too much further, that I will be able to control the itching and inflammation until the end of July, and that nothing worse develops.