Quigley Therapy and Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, friends!


Have you recovered from all that delicious food yet?! We had beef and ham and bacon and green bean casserole and loads of goodies. Mmmmm! Christmas Eve was the Siler Family Christmas and it was so much fun. It was great to see everyone and spend time together. My cousin and his wife have a little boy and it was his first Christmas. He's adorable and I had lots of fun making faces at him and making him laugh! He's pretty cuddly too :-) Later that night we opened presents as a family. When we were kids we could never open presents on Christmas Eve, we had to wait for Christmas morning. Now that we're adults, we don't wait! Opening presents was a lot of fun and full of surprises, which I love. My dad has the gift of giving and he surprised each of us with an extra present after we were all done. (Ask my mom about her stuffed buffalo.) I almost burst with excitement when I opened my new camera (which was difficult to open because my hands were shaking a little more than usual)! We didn't get to bed until probably 1:00am, what a night! Good thing I had slept in and taken two naps before company came. Christmas morning we got up and got ready for Christmas morning brunch. This is a great tradition where we have a brunch for our family and some of our neighbors. The neighbors are always changing, and it's fun to have them over. We had a very full house this year! After everyone left we crashed, in fact, I'm still crashed! Watching the Packers win was a great way to end Christmas! 


On Christmas, as I thought about the night before and all the fun and family and presents, I also took some time to read through the Christmas account and remember why, and who, we celebrate. Christmas isn't about giving presents, it's about remembering the greatest gift ever given to us, Jesus. God gave us the gift of Jesus in the form of a cuddly little baby. I wonder what was going through God's mind as the world received the gift of His Son? He was probably excited, He was giving the greatest gift our world could ever receive. He was giving Mary and Joseph a child, He was giving the world hope and a way to be reconciled to Himself. Just think of the feeling you get when you have a present to give someone that you know they will absolutely love. You're almost more excited to give it than they are to get it! I imagine God had a look on his face similar to the look on my dad's face as he gave us all our surprise presents. I think there was another feeling as well. I imagine that along with the excitement, there was pain and sadness. God knew that this baby, His Son, would grow up to redeem His people, but that redemption would come through the most painful, horrible death imaginable. People would hate Jesus, they would reject Him. One of his closest friends would betray him, the rest would run away. His perfectly innocent Son would be spit on, mocked, brutally beat and hung on a cross to die. I'm sure it helped knowing that three days later Jesus would raise from the dead, conquering sin and death once and for all. 

But think about it. Just because you know something is going to end well doesn't make the process of getting there any easier to go through, or to watch. It's the same in our lives, there are so many hard things that we go through. I know of several people that are struggling right now with death, sickness, missing loved ones that have passed away, tough decisions that need to be made, etc.... If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you know that there is hope. You know that someday you will be reunited with your loved one. You know that someday you will be in a place where there is no sickness or death. You know that "after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you" (I Peter 5:10). I love these verses, they are so full of hope. If you are struggling to get through the holidays, it's okay. I think that sometimes Christians pass over the "after you have suffered" part of the verse and move on to the everything is going to be okay part. But suffering is a real part of life and it sucks. So this is my encouragement to you. If you are suffering right now, don't feel like you have to get over it. Let Jesus meet you in your suffering and allow Him to restore you, confirm you, strengthen you and establish you in His time. And if you know someone who is suffering right now, be Jesus to them and meet them in their suffering. Sit with them, cry with them, laugh with them. Allow them to be where God has allowed them to be without expecting them to snap out of it and get back to normal.


I'm so thankful for those of you who have been Jesus to me as I struggle with my health. I'm thankful for those of you who have showered me with grace. I'll be honest, it's hard to accept! (Not that I'm stubborn or independent or anything...insert sarcasm here!) I'm thankful for those of you who continue to pray for me and encourage me and try to understand what I'm going through. It's been a tough month. See my last post "The Devil's Tic-Tacs" to read more about that. Since that post it's been about the same, maybe a little worse. I finally caved and went to live with my parents for a couple of weeks. I got here last Friday. They got me set up with an amazingly comfortable bed downstairs in the library/computer room. No stairs!! I'll be able to bring the bed back to the apartment with me and I'm excited about that! I'm enjoying the time with my family and getting a little Quigley Therapy! Cutest dog in the world and he loves me to pieces :-) 


I have less than a week until I go back to Mayo in Rochester to see a dermatologist. I have some thoughts about that and would love your prayers. I was referred to this department because of rashes and itching and hair loss. My rheumatologist in Eau Claire thought those were signs of the disease becoming more active. However, my rheumatologist in Rochester thinks they are side effects of the methotrexate and plaquenil. Those are the two drugs he had me stop taking  and the reason I am in so much pain now. It's been almost a month since I stopped taking the methotrexate and three weeks on top of that since I stopped taking the plaquenil. My symptoms are not any better and are in fact a bit worse I think. If it was an allergic reaction I would think the symptoms would have gotten better when I stopped taking the drugs. The rash/itching concerns me because if you have an allergic reaction to plaquenil and don't catch it quickly enough it can turn into a skin disease that my doctor didn't explain to me but really hopes I don't have. 


With all that said, will you join me in praying for a few things? 
-Pray for wisdom for the dermatologist that I see on Jan. 4, 9:45am. 
-Pray that my body has not developed a new disease.  
-Pray for wisdom for my rheumatologist as he receives the information from the dermatologist and determines if he will put me back on the medications I have been on or  if I will need to start new medications.
-If I need to be put on new medications pray for wisdom in choosing one that will work well for me as there are several options, all with their own array of new and different side effects.
-Pray that I would be able to go back to work soon. I haven't been able to work for the past several weeks and I really miss work and all the fun, crazy people I work with :-)
-Lastly, please pray for a subsiding of the pain I've been experiencing. I'm so sick and tired of being sick and tired and in pain! 


THANK YOU, my friends. I don't know what I'd do without you! Here's to joy and health in the new year. Can you believe it's going to be 2012 soon?! Yikes! 

The Devil's Tic Tacs

Hello again,

Here's another update for all of you curious people who are so faithfully praying for me! Praise the Lord that my doctor decided I could go on Prednisone for a month while I'm off my other meds. This is a blessing and a curse! After starting it I had a couple of pretty good days with extra energy, the most I have had in a long time. Then I woke up with a sore throat. I haven't left home since Tuesday night and I'm going a little stir crazy! My throat doesn't hurt as much today, but I've had a fever and feel all around lousy. I've occupied myself by watching The Facts of Life re-runs on YouTube, an episode of Psych, reading a little (it's too hard to concentrate), and listening to Christian rock music while eating some of the delicious food my dad brought me.

I've also been keeping up with some of the girls in my Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease (UCTD) Group on Facebook, they keep me sane. I learned a few things this week from them. I learned that many of them like rock music, the heavier the better. Now, I've never really understood the appeal of rock music. All those people screaming at you, who likes that? I'd rather listen to something happy and cheerful. That is, until recently. I've been enjoying it more and more and I think I know why my UCTD girls and I like it. (Let me know if I'm wrong girls, this might just be me!) When you deal with chronic pain it is very frustrating. The disease messes with you, the drugs they put you on to fix you give you side effects that are just as bad as the disease they are supposed to be fighting. With UCTD the pain is never in the same place and you never know what new symptom will decide it wants to come out and play. Just when you think things are under control BAM! Something new hits you that you didn't even know was a possibility. More tests, new doctors, more waiting, less answers. It makes you want to scream and beat someone...er, um, I mean something. Enter the rock music. Somehow it is comforting to listen to someone else scream, especially when I don't have the energy to do so myself. And it's not all screaming, some of these people have really beautiful voices. I like music that I know has clean lyrics, even if I can't understand them all (that's what the internet is for, looking up words to songs)! My brother gave me a couple of Demon Hunter CDs. (Thanks Ike!) One of the songs on there is called Collapsing. I thought I would share this one with you because it's not so "scary" for those of you who don't like metal. Here are some of the words:

I, I see the weight of hollow death residing in you

Take now your final breath

Exhale the truth

I see the fear of nothing left

Dead fragments of youth

You hold it in yourself 

I feel it too 

I mourn your blindness 

I die along 

And swallow darkness 

In misery is where I belong 

Collapsing in on yourself 

I don't know why I try (I try) 

Collapsing in on yourself 

I don't know why you deny 

I, I know the light is burning dim and dying in you 

I know the pain that lies within 

I feel it too 

To watch the video, click HERE.

You know, it would be so easy to live like this. It would be so easy to collapse, to let God's light that is in me burn dim, to give in to the pain, to let the weight fall down heavy on me, to blind myself to what God is doing and how He is working. This world is full of people living a hollow death, who are blind to what really matters. I feel for them, I understand them. But I refuse to be one of them. I refuse to let the devil win and drag me down. I understand what it is like to live with chronic pain. I understand how people can become depressed and see the world as a dark place and even though I feel it to, I will try to direct people's eyes to the Lord, just as I try to keep my own gaze on Him. He is the only one that can make sense of the pain and bring light into the darkness. I don't know what pain or darkness you may be experiencing right now, but I want you to know that hope lies in the loving arms of the Lord. Reach out to Him and He will pick you up and set you in a place of honor in His Kingdom.

It's so easy for those of us in the church to shoot our wounded, to gossip about those we don't understand, to judge others and think we are better than they are. I have done it and I am ashamed. I ask for the Lord's forgiveness, for Him to change my heart and help me to love those I don't understand...and those I do. We have no idea what people are going through or what kind of darkness they are walking through. As we expectantly wait for Christmas and the celebration of Christ's birth I encourage you to have compassion and show love. Reach out to someone who may be hurting and show them that they are beautiful and loved and cherished by the Maker of the Universe. Pain (of any kind) can do funny things to a person. So if someone acts rude, yells at you or does things you don't understand, love them anyway. It probably isn't you they are fighting, but the darkness that tries to overtake them. Or maybe they are fighting the medication that is supposed to help, yet plays with their emotions and turns them into someone that deep down they are not. So don't take it personally, love them and gently point them to the One who can take away their fear and walk them through the darkness into the light of His comfort, love, grace and mercy.

If you are the one who is walking through the darkness, take heart my friend. You are not alone. You are loved. You are cherished. You are not a mistake. You are here for a reason. God has amazing plans for your life. It may not seem like it now, but reach out and take God's hand. Let Him lead you into the light. Let Him love you. Don't be afraid, or too proud, to accept His love. The Lord of the universe loves you. He died for you. Don't ever think that what you are going through is too much or too bad for God. He sent His Son to die for you. We celebrate this fact in a couple of weeks. Accept that and let Him radically change your life. God never said this life would be easy, in fact, His Word says that you will face much suffering. It also says that He will never leave you or forsake you. Never. Reach out to Him and He will use the suffering you are going through to make you strong and equip you to love the way He loves. You don't have to journey through this life alone. Take His hand, He's been waiting for you.

(Wow, this blog entry didn't go anywhere near where I was expecting it to go tonight. I guess someone needed to hear this and I must have needed to speak it. May the Lord use the words my fingers type for His glory.)

Don't worry, I didn't forget the second thing I learned from my UCTD group this week! Besides the fact that many of the members enjoy rock music, I learned that prednisone is not-so-affectionately called the devil's tic tacs! My new friend Miranda let me in on this well known nickname that I had somehow missed when she said: "Even if you are an angel, we don't call prednisone 'the devils tic-tacs' for nothing! They really bring out the worst in us!" I should have known, even though this stuff helps the pain, it sure messes with your emotions and makes you feel quite grouchy, even angry. So if I snap at you or say something unkind or insensitive or have on my glass half empty glasses or seem not quite myself it's because I'm throwing back the devil's tic tacs! I've also been having a terrible time sleeping. Between the pain and my downstairs neighbor, I'm a walking zombie. I'm sorry, I will try not to use these things as an excuse to be grouchy! Pray for me, and let me know how I can pray for you. I have lots of time on my hands as I sit here not feeling well. Keeping my eyes on others and lifting them up to Christ helps me keep my eyes off of myself and put them where they belong, locked with the eyes of my Maker.