SJOGREN'S SYNDROME

Sjögren's (pronounced show grins) Syndrome is an autoimmune disorder. Like all autoimmune conditions, it attacks the body. Sjögren's focuses on attacking moisture producing glands such as tear ducts and salivary glands, but can affect moisture throughout the body.

As with other autoimmune conditions, symptoms include fatigue and chronic pain.

Symptoms that are unique to Sjögren's include parotid gland pain and dysfunction, chronic nosebleeds, dry eyes, and advanced tooth decay.

Sjögren's sufferers can also have digestive issues owing to the lack of moisture in the body.

With Sjögren's comes a lower quality of life, though most with the condition live as long as the average.

Some notable people who have the disorder include: Shannon Boxx, a U.S. Olympic soccer player; Carrie Ann Inaba, a singer and actress; Venus Williams, a world champion tennis player; Stephen McPhail, a professional soccer player; and the singer, Halsey.

If you want to read more about my own struggles with the condition, you can find those posts here.

2020 Vision

Mostly, I’ve been planning for the new year, but I discovered I know Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It was a recollection under the influence that brought this to light. I also discovered I still suck at drawing, but I’m okay with that. I used to think I had to be good at everything, and I’ve realized that’s just not so. Some friends and I recently hit up a local board game pub. It was a pretty fun night. The first game was Balderdash and I was terrible at it. Because I was the writer in the group, some of my friends thought I should be more embarrassed about it and hide the fact that I don’t spend all my free time learning advanced vocabulary. But I’m not upset about it. Why? Two reasons: 1. I now know what I don’t know. 2. If one takes a close look at the top selling novels on the market, the level of the language used is not the level of many of the words in Balderdash. Not that I’m comparing my own work to those, but audience is what matters in writing. To me, it is far better to e...

Merry Monday - Methods

Today, I had my visual fields test and eye check up. The visual fields test is rather like a crappy videogame. You press a button each time you see a light. It's crappy because it isn't fun to sit in an uncomfortable way while you wear an eye patch and you aren't allowed to move. Because my eyes run dry, it's extra uncomfortable for me. I have to blink multiple times to keep my eyes from heading into emergency tearing mode. Sometimes we even have to pause. We tried to pause today and the machine got angry and decided we had to start over. I was almost done with the right eye. In theory, the tests aren't that long, but preservatives in eye drops and bright lights all cause me pain. My eye doctor doesn't do the puff of air to check for glaucoma. She uses advanced photographic imaging to look at my optic nerve and the health of my eye along with her own eyes and bright lights. Does that mean the puff of air was no good at checking for glaucoma? Not at all. Many eye...

Merry Monday - A beautiful day for taxes

[caption id="attachment_4711" align="alignright" width="300"] Image created using Bit Strips.[/caption] With French done, I have a lot of other things to catch up on. It seems like I have Mount Everest ahead of me, but I'm just going through the list one at a time. I've gotten a couple of things done and some started. Renovations Before the weekend, my new kitchen floor was installed. After the credits that Jiffy gave me, install cost less than $40. The old floor was light grey peel and stick tile, which was peeling itself up on the edges. Because I couldn't get all the glue up from the floor underneath the peel and stick, I needed to put new floor in. Oh, I started peeling it up with a hair dryer. I really don't recommend that. It doesn't get hot enough to work well. It was taking around 20 minutes each tile with the hair dryer. With a proper heat gun, a couple hours for the whole floor. Old floors: [gallery ids="9630,9631" ...

Rae Roy

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