Postponed scans, primary care doc visit

A quick-ish overview:

• No abdominal or spine CT scans yesterday because insurance hadn't approved them yet. But the spine ones are approved now for next week.

• Talked through the steroid use with my primary care doc. The steroids make me feel bad.

• More pain now than a week ago.

• Bloodwork today to see if the steroids did reduce the inflammation even though they make me feel bad and didn't reduce pain (so far).

• Take a reduced steroid dose as we wait for results from bloodwork and scans.

• Friday's brain MRI is approved.

Do I indeed have polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR)?? I sure do have the symptoms. And the day after I started the steroids I could feel the specific tendons that are affected. Before that it was like static—pain in a general area but I couldn't feel the specific tendon that was hurting.

Lots of people get pain relief within a couple of days of starting the steroids.

But not me!

It seems the steroids made the pain WORSE. The last two days have been rough. Now my left hamstring feels like a badly-pulled muscle. I don't sleep well... even worse than before the steroids, and that didn't involve good sleep 90% of the time.

PMR isn't an easy diagnosis.

I'll continue on the path my docs prescribe and hope some clues lead to a definitive answer. If definitive is even possible.

Mainly though I'd like to have a lot less pain AND scans that show NO cancer or any other big, scary thing.

I'll continue updating y'all along and along. Thanks for your prayers and good thoughts and good vibes.