Health update

 I thought it was time to post an update on where I'm at with my health.

1. It looks like I've developed Sjögrens syndrome, an autoimmune condition where your immune system attacks glands that make moisture.  This explains my swallowing issues (which seem to be due to a dry mouth, and have gone away since I've been a bit more careful about drinking regularly).  The dental hygienist has suggested some products I can try if it gets worse.  It also explains my dry and scratchy eyes.  For that I'm now using eye drops every 1-2 hours, which helps heaps but is a pain to do!  I've been given new drops to try that might work for a bit longer, but I decided to finish off the current bottle before I open those, as they go off pretty fast.
2. It also seems that I've had a recurrence of my concussion symptoms, which is where the brain fog and nausea fit in.  There's some medical controversy as to whether this can actually happen, but my symptoms are responding to the treatment that helped with the concussion, at least.  My GP is of the opinion it doesn't much matter why this has occurred, seeing as I've found something that's helping!

I have concussion :-(

I fell out of bed on the night of January 16th - or rather, forcefully shoved myself out of bed, as I was was trying to move up higher in the bed but misjudged the direction and moved out of it instead.  I fell on my back, hitting my head and upper back hard.

Initially I thought all I had was a scraped and swollen ankle, as well as a sore right side to my body; it wasn't till later that I started to wonder about concussion.

The first thing was a couple of bouts of intense nausea and blotchy/blurry vision - that happened on the Wednesday when I was getting ready to go camping, and again on Thursday en route to camping.  I initially put it down to a migraine aura, but eventually realised the visual disturbance was quite different.

I wondered about trying to see a doctor in Māngere Bridge, but nothing seemed seriously wrong and, with my complex medical history, waiting till I could see my own GP seemed better.  We Googled concussion and found that the main treatment seems to be rest, which we were doing anyway :-)

image credit: Mayo clinic

I was also basically fine - I had a few specific symptoms, but biked home from Ambury Park comfortably; I was also able to bike to Blockhouse Bay on Thursday and swim for 45 minutes with no problems.