Not very well. What I had dismissed as a tummy bug on my birthday has actually not gone away. And has gotten so much worse. It’s caused me to be extremely tired and I can’t leave the house. The problem is I can’t tell what’s going on. To go with it I’ve developed trigger finger in both hand.

I had also dismissed that as my fault for throwing good health after bad in preserving my data. But. It’s exactly the same pattern in both hands which just screams RA. If it was over use then the knots around my tendons would map more to the mouse buttons. Instead the worst is middle finger on each side with knots I can feel easily, then ring fingers with smaller less intrusive ones, then the tendons in my index fingers feel more like they are barely passing through, and my little fingers feel more like they are drifting and it is just all in all extremely limiting.

So I’ve got a short taper of prednisone to calm down inflammation, as a break. At this point though there’ll be secondary problems which are a bit more difficult to resolve because it’s not just a case of taking probiotics but which ones. And that’s made even more complicated being on immunosuppressive therapy as they’re all live organism so could get out of control.

I’m hoping this does indeed “just” mean a change in diet daily probiotics, but I know my RA/immune side effects. I have a pattern of developing symptoms that bed in and hang around for more than 18 months. I even have a couple of nodules on a knuckle- mine tend to stay small but spread and they’ve moved apart fairly quickly. These are essentially the same process as what happens inside the joint.

On a nicer note, Missy has managed to wiggle her way to my bed and has slept on me two nights in a row. It’s a bit difficult because of course both Boo and Mr Carlo loved my room but especially when they weren’t well.

It is easing tensions between Missy and Fluffy, so I’m hoping Fluffy settles even more.

Our Very Good Papa blackbird is missed, but he taught his children well and while we won’t be sure which is which we do know he does live on that way. His wing injury just made it so easy to recognise him which is how we knew he had lived a good long life, but it’s also how we became attached by recognising him every day.