I need your help....

My immune system is turning on me......

This all started about a month ago. I got a UTI, tried really hard to treat it with cranberry juice (sometimes this does work). When I got that all too familiar pain in my back and on my side, and I realized I had a fever I went to the doctor and got a precription for an antibiotic. I'm allergic to a few different classes of them so I'm always worried something bad will happen when I take one. Well this was no exception....

After taking Agumentin (a penicillin) for about a week....I noticed my thoat was sore. Then within a few hours my eyes were burning. The inside of my mouth was covered in blisters which broke open and formed ulcers. My glands were swollen, my joints were aching....and I had a fever, plus a rash....

I went to the ER, was tested for everything under the sun (mono, epstein barr, cmv, herpes,). My blood was cultured for different types of bacteria. I had no infection......but they sent me home with another prescription for an antibiotic..."just in case"....gah...and antiboitic is what caused this mess in the first place....I never filled the prescription....

Well anyway....after about a week I started to heal. My eyes weren't sticking together and bloodshot. My mouth was healing...

Then bam....last week I start getting thos sores in my mouth again. My glands are swollen and I had a slight fever.

I currently have over twenty canker sores in my mouth. I'm in a lot of pain.

Oh...and the only thing I actually got out of the Emergency Room was finding out that I had a high SED rate and an elevated white blood cell count....but no infection....hmmm...

Guess what....it's autoimmune. My immue system is going haywire. It's possible I have something called Behcets Disease ...It's a disease where the immune system destroys little blood vessels. I actually have many of the symtoms and have had them on and off my whole life. I've always gotten canker sores. The inside of my mouth reacts to everything. I can't have spicy food, acidic food, I can't use toothpaste that has SLS in it...I can't use mouthwashes that have alcohol in them....hell I can't even drink hard alcohol for the same reason....andy tiny little bit of irritation in my mouth causes canker sores....and not just one....a whole mouth full of them....

I found out that I also have uveitis (inflammation in my eyes), which is also a symptom of Behcet's......so is that on and off joint pain....and those things that I thought were ingorwn hairs on my legs that leave behing little bruises.....they aren't ingrown hairs at all....even acne can be a symptom (which I no longer have)...

How do I make it stop??

I don't want to be on corticosteroids for the rest of my life....

Why I've decided to keep my curves...

So I've gained a total of 8lbs. When you aren't even 5" tall that's a good deal of weight. I currently weigh 113lbs, and I'm 4'11" tall. I'm not overweight, but I'm not as tiny as I used to be, considering two years ago I weighed 88lbs.

I used to be a competitive weightlifter, so I always had a huge amount of muscle mass, and very low body fat. I usually weighed about 100-105lbs. I was tiny but dense (heavy for my size) because of all the muscle. I stopped lifting about two months into my Accutane course, because I developed a ganglion cyst on my wrist, which one day will require surgery. I cannot put strain on that wrist.....so I my pectoral muscles were strong enough bench 125lbs, but my wrist wasn't strong enough to support the bar.....I figured I was too old to be doing that anyaway and wanted to see what would happen if I stopped......at first I lost weight.....I got down to about 102lbs....

Then I started taking a medication that has a side effect of weight gain.....that coupled with a new lack of muscle mass lead to a 8lb weight gain....

I noticed that none of my bras fit me. I used to wear a 32C or 30D, but none of my bras fit anymore. I'd get that lovley 4-boob effect with every bra I owned.

I noticed that I no longer had a six pack, and I even have a tiny bulge of fat under my belly button (that can easily disappear by contracting my abs).

One thing I noticed was that my pants were fitting better. I could wear pants that I'd put aside because they would fall down.

So I don't have a 33" bust, a 22.5" waist and 32" hips anymore, I've got more like a 36" bust, 24.5" waist and 34" hips......but that means I'm no longer a 00 or girls size 14 in pants. I can wear a size 0 at Express (which is really a size 2)!!!!!....and more importantly, I can wear grown up clothes.

So I went shopping to celebrate...and an obscene amount of money later I have a new wardrobe suited to my new petite and curvy body.

I also found bras that fit me....at the mall too. I went to Nordstrom, and was looking at some bras in what I though was my new size (which I was surprised to find in a store), when a saleswoman came up to me and said politely "none of those will fit you, you can try them on but they won't fit" (referring to the 32D bras in my hand). I figured she'd say you're smaller then a D-cup, but to my suprise, she said "You are at least a 32DD, if not a 32F".......me, an F cup, are you fucking kidding me?

Well she was right.....I'm a 30F or a 32DD....my new bras look like miniature over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders. But now, with properly fitting bras I can wear shirts with buttons again, and ironically my boobs look smaller wearing a 30F than they do wearing a 32C (I guess because theres less boob spillage over the top and out the sides). My bust size is managable....it sounds huge, but it's really not, as the band size goes down the cup sizes shrink porportionally, I have the same size bust as someone who wears a 34B bra, only with a much smaller ribcage. Really I look at myself in the mirror with out a bra on and they don't look that big.....not like I'd be a DDD or an F-cup......

I've decided I like being this weight. It's not as hard to maintain, I don't have to spend hours at the gym everyday. I do cardio for 35 minutes four times a week, and I take bellydancing and hip-hop dance classes, in addition to pilates that I do every morning. I'm also adding in ballet too....I used to do ballet when I was young. I was pretty good at it, but when it came time for me to decide if it was something I wanted to pursue seriously, I was told by my instructor that I didn't have a dancer's body...I was too curvy (at 12 years old, and 90lbs) to be a ballerina.....well so what....if I want to do ballet I will.....

I am 25lbs heavier that I was two years ago....and I couldn't be happier with my body.

Is this diet making me feel sick?

So I've decided to try to lose some weight. I take psych meds which have a nice side effect of making me gain weigh. Specifically in my boobs (where I usually gain weight). I need to buy new bras, and I have a very unusual size so they are very expensive. I don't want to shell out a few hundred bucks for new bras, so I've decided to lose about 5-10lbs, so that I'll be able to wear my bras comfortably....

So I've started a diet similar to the South Beach Diet, and in the first week I'm really limiting my carb intake. I've always eaten lots of complex carbs from grains. I'd have a big bowl of Kashi Good Friends cereal in the morning and I'd have some other complex carbs throught the day. Plus I'd have sugar in my coffee and tea.

Well I haven't had sugar or any carbs that didn't come from veggies and fruit (even my fruit intake is limited). At first I felt great. Reducing my sugar intake actually helped stabilize my mood....

But after a few days I'm developing a headache and this morning when I woke up I almost passed out.

My calorie intake is only about 1300-1400 calories a day, but I'm small and that's not too low for me.

I am working out. I am taking a couple dance classes, and I do cardio ever day (for about 30 minutes), so I'm really not buring off that many calories. If I had carbs in my diet I'd be fine...

Is the lack of carbs that is making me feel like crap?

My oil is back....

Just a bit though.....

I still only have to wash my hair once a week, but I noticed my skin gets a bit dewy......

Hopefully it stays like this....I can deal with this.....some pressed power and maybe a blotting sheet aroung mid-afternoon, on the days I don't want to be "dewy"....

I still have't had one real pimple yet.....I've had a couple tiny comedoes, but nothing infammatory.....

GAH...THIS SUCKS....

I am sooooo hungry....all the time....I'm craving everything lately. I ate like crap all weekend and today I can't get chocolate out of my head.

My psych meds make me so hungry, and I'm starting to gain weight....

Grrr......