Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Can't sleep - too much on my mind...

I went to the doctor today - the dermatologist actually for what I thought was going to be a "routine" visit. You see, last July (2006) I went camping on the beach with friends; and after spending the whole weekend in the sun AND applying plenty of sunscreen all weekend I ended up with a pretty bad pimply rash on my face. At the time I thought that my sunscreen was out-of-date and I had just gotten too much sun. Since that time I have had a couple more outbreaks on my face anytime I am out in the sun whether I use sunscreen or not...so I started thinking I was developing an allergy to the sun?! A month ago I had an extremely severe rash that lasted about 4 days and my face was very swollen and I ran a fever at the same time...but I was not sunburned! I told myself if it happens again I'm going to the dermatologist.

After spending this past weekend in the sun (I wore a hat all weekend and sat in the shade as much as possible) I woke up this morning with this rash on my face. Upon examination by the dermatologist she told me first that I have rosacea (which I already knew...I haven't taken medicine for that in a couple of years though so she gave me some more medicine to take for that) and then secondly that she wants to test me for Lupus!! After we talked some more, we discovered that I have some other common symptoms of Lupus that I had seen my primary care doctor for but all the symptoms had not been linked together. So I went and had about 6 tubes of blood drawn today and now I wait...for 48 long hours.

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