4th Day of Pesach!

Tonight is the start of the 5th day of Pesach or Passover. I managed to cook (although I planned to not do as much as usual), prepare, set, and lead our family seder Friday night. Despite my health deteriorating. Felt accomplished afterwards. Even if it was just for my parent and I. 

I roasted a beef marrow bone this time. Safeway had ran out of their soup bones (which is what I got last time), so I went to Central Market to see what they had. Felt a bit panicked that I wouldn't find a bone...They had them in the 'extra' meat section. Same place as the beef tongue, chicken schmaltz, chicken feet, organ meats, etc. It was easy to roast. I'm keeping it in the freezer so I could use it next year, too. Used to do that with an actual roasted lamb shank bone (that's traditionally what it's supposed to be) for years. It became petrified. Looked cool.

'Roasted' the egg for the plate by holding a hard-boiled egg with tongs over a stovetop burner's flames. Took longer than expected, but certainly not as long as putting it in the oven. Plus, I was able to monitor it better. Hard-boiled eggs in the oven can explode. I've only done that a couple of times. 

We had the usual appetizers: hard-boiled eggs, matzo, and gefilte fish. I got a lot of hard-boiled eggs from Safeway, which made it so much easier. Made matzo ball soup. Used chicken broth instead of water, and added carrots, celery, and parsley. I should have used reduced sodium broth, because it ended up really salty. I like that, but it was on the verge of too much. There's a lot of sodium in the balls and soup flavoring mix. The matzo balls turned out just right. Fluffy, but with some structure to them. 

We had roasted chicken, Pesach roasted garlic couscous, salad with craisins and shredded carrots, and Pesach popovers. I tried using the orange ginger sauce as a dressing, and the ginger was way too strong. I made 24 (2 batches) popovers this year. I know we'd have 2 at our seder, and our friends' seder the next night had 11 people. Just in case, I thought having 2 per person would be enough. I know that many people love them. 

We broke into the dark chocolate seder plate, and I had a Pesach peppermint patty for dessert. That plate is just as impressive as last year. There were a few bad reviews of it on Amazon, saying and showing pics of it arriving broken up. Ours was fine. Totally intact. In fact, it was difficult to break. Makes me wonder if they broke it up themselves just to make a negative review. We have a lot more Pesach desserts. There's pound cake, chocolate covered macaroons, chocolate macaroons, large marshmallows, and fruit jelly slices. (I think that's all the others.) I don't think I've had Osem's pound cake flavor previously. I've had their marble and chocolate chip cakes. Every time they've been amazing! Somehow very moist, soft, and the flavor is perfect. Sometimes it tastes better than regular cake. It's like magic. 

It was nice seeing everyone at the 2nd night's seder. Found out that one of the hosts' dogs had to be put down. She was having a lot of issues for a while. Both their dogs were/are big. It seemed kind of sad to only see Zoe, who's younger than the other one was. Hopefully, she has many more healthy years. 

I brought up my health stuff there. I didn't really want to bring it up, but when asked what I'm up to right now...I was honest about trying to get this health stuff taken care of. I told them about the awful treatment I got during my upper endo/colonoscopy, and how weird that GI was. They were understanding about it. There was one person that seemed not very 'with it' about the sex and gender thing (he wasn't hateful, just confused about it), but seemed well-meaning and did feel awful about what happened to me. Still haven't written/filed a complaint about it. I also briefly touched on the other health stuff I'm going through. It seemed like they wanted me to elaborate, but I didn't want to go into more of that. 

There was a lot of good stuff for the meal part. Last year, I remember not eating much of what was there. There were much fewer people, and a few things I either didn't like or would upset my gut. This year there were hard-boiled eggs, seemingly homemade gefilte fish (still had mini bones mixed in and didn't have that 'jarred' taste. I prefer the jarred ones more), matzo ball soup (theirs is never that great, always have to add so much salt), salad greens (we brought this, plus craisins and shredded carrots to mix in), Pesach popovers (obviously we brought these), cauliflower casserole thing, beef brisket, potato kugel (like a casserole), a fruit mix (pineapple, blueberries, grapes), Pesach chocolate chip cookies (the hostess makes these every year, and they're really addicting), fruit slices jelly candy, and Pesach peppermint patties. 

I've kept up with eating kosher for Pesach stuff so far. Last year I ended it early, because we went to Leavenworth during the middle of it. Still have some ideas for meals and there are quite a bit of snacks as well as desserts. Most years I don't make it to the end of the holiday. It gets too difficult at a certain point. Plus, it's not the greatest for someone with digestive issues to keep it up for long. If I end it early, at least I kept it up for half the holiday. 

I have an appointment to see my primary on Thursday. Yesterday I decided to make a list of my symptoms ordered from head to toe to prepare for it. I also went without Extra Strength Tylenol to see what it was like. Tylenol only takes the edge off. I'm still in a lot of pain while on it. I've been taking it for roughly a month straight, which isn't good. Might cause other issues later on if I continue to take 2 or 3 doses of it every day. I almost couldn't stand it when I was completely off of it. Noticed more things this way, too. 

My eyelid rash is worse, and may have spread a little to my nose, top tips of my ears, and my scalp. The scalp one I'm really unsure about, but there are certain areas that if I just touch them, they burn. I feel the same sunburn burn feeling I have with the eyelid rash in those areas. Not very visible with those, but neither was the eyelid area for a while. Felt the pain long before I could actually see it. 

My jaw joints feel really swollen. Somehow, I think that's affected my ears which are achy. My dysphagia is worse at times. Still taking Lansoprazole, and I don't notice any difference with that or the other gut stuff. I've been taking it since my follow-up with that GI. That was on the 9th. I've been very lightheaded, and have both chest and shoulder pain. I'm a little scared of that combo. 

All my muscles are worse with the pain and weakness. I have a weird circular rough patch of skin near my elbow. Both wrists are worse than before. The left one (which was the first one to be in pain) has a lump that feels like it's filled with something. Both hands hurt; joints and muscles. The knuckles are swollen, too. I'm constantly nauseous. Sometimes it hurts to breathe. There's some spine pain. Every so often, I've had bright red blood come out of my butt. Not just a little. My parent thinks that the ones who performed my colonoscopy might have punctured something. I'm not so sure about that. That just doesn't seem right to me. If it's not, then why is it doing that? It is disturbing either way. 

Looking up myositis again, I think a lot of my symptoms line up with dermatomyositis (dm) more than polymyositis (pm). The clear difference between them is one has skin-related signs, like rashes. Makes sense because 'derma' relates to skin. It's an inflammatory ('itis') skin ('dermato') and muscle ('myos') disease. Also, both dm and pm are rare autoimmune diseases. When I looked up dm, the pic that popped up next to the description looked like my eyelid rash. Makes me really lean towards that. I'm not a medical expert, but I'm oddly fascinated with learning about things I don't have answers for yet. Even if it's scary, I can't help but look into it. (Another possibility was lupus, but I highly doubt it.) I can always suggest that it might be this, also. If anything, they can test for it to eliminate that possibility. Oh, both dm and pm can cause arthritis. So, I could have both. Wahoo!

Whatever this is, it's getting worse every day. I thought about going to Urgent Care, but realized they wouldn't know what to do. Thought about going to the hospital, but I don't want to go there unless I'm on the verge of death. My mom passed away in the last local hospital I was in. That's enough of a turn-off. Plus, I've been hospitalized twice over a decade ago. It wasn't fun. (Constantly being called Princess and referred to as hon added to that.) Although, I remember one of those times the food was amazing! It would be scary if my primary suggests I go to the hospital after my appointment. If she does, I feel I wouldn't have much of a choice. The good sides to it would be they can ease my pain, monitor me, run a bunch of tests, and help me with whatever needs to be done right there. It's gotten to the point where it's hard to cope with. So, I don't know. Just need to make it to Thursday to see.

Got a new pillow recently. My really old one was beat up and didn't resemble a pillow anymore. The new one's a copper pillow. I didn't really care about that, but it was on sale, so why not? It's supposed to keep you cool, anti-microbial, and hypoallergenic. All I cared about was a sturdy fully stuffed pillow. It is, and it's pretty comfy. It lifts my head more than the other kind did in the past, but that's ok. 

I accidentally stepped on Rosie's tail this past weekend. I immediately felt really bad about it. She got up and hissed at me. As soon as she did, Tasha jumped off the bed and attacked her. First time I saw her do that. Normally it's the other way around. Apparently she felt she needed to protect me after that hiss. It scared Rosie enough she ran downstairs and hissed more along the way. Tasha stopped a few steps down, came back to me, and demanded attention. Also, not the usual. I'll take it, though. Felt bad for Rosie. All of this happened so quickly.