Dahlek: W/u for cancer? Well, I get my mammograms, get my pap tests, had a colonoscopy, and all was well. I get a lot of bloodwork almost monthly, with my sinus guy following my liver tests because I take an anti-fungal with possible liver toxicity, and my endo does my thyroids and cortisol every 3 months, unless he chagnes the dose, and then it's ever 2 months. So I think I'm covered there.

I think I'm mainly autoimmune, but I have never had really abnormal numbers.

I am pretty sure I was hyper thyroid for many years; I see this looking back, and then became mildly hypothyroid, with a low T3 and a normal T4. I'm treated with both T3 and T4, but because my TSH is low, my bone doctor (can you believe how many specialists I've got now?) wants my endo to see if he can lower my meds at all, without making me too symptomatic, as bone grows better with a higher TSH, which is suppressed by the thyroid meds.

Keeping everyone up to date: I had silicone breast implants put in after I finished nursing my 2nd kid, because the plastic surgeon they no longer did repairs or lifts on women with saggy saggy breasts from nursing; they popped in implants.

For the next 10 years I had a lot of joint pains, as well as swolln nerves. My ulner nerve became enlarged at my elbow; then that went away and another nerve had a problem. I had a lot of headaches. I had neck pain.

In 1996 I noticed my toes felt stubby. I was told I had foot issues and needed orthotics. In 1997 my neck pain turned out to be a disk pressing the cord and my left side got weak and I had the disk removed. I had lots of sinus infections, and sometime between 1997 and 2000 I had sinus surgery and a coupl of months of IV antibiotics for a sinus infection with an organism that wouldn't respond to anything I could take orally. In 1999 I got mouth and tongue ulcers, an autoimmune skin rash, and then a major neueroloigcal illness. Everything vibrated, I felt insects crawling on me, I had major balance problems, major numbness and got the peripheral neuropathy w/u.

I was told I had an autoimmune illness from the silicone. I had the implants removed. I was put on prednisone and arava and plaquinel, none of which helped (except plaquinel, made my morning stiffness go away). I had a major pn workup in new York, and then went out to Mayo where they said the same thing: idiopathic sensori-motor pn with autonomic involvement.

I found this board. I pulled back on work, went on disabilyt (I had a private policy that let me work part time), did yoga and took supplements. I improved really significantly.

Then, in 2006 I got sciatic, and was diagnosed with a synovial cyst L4,5 and spinal stenosis, and had the laminectomy and fusion in feb 06.

Several months later I had a sinus flare, and instead of going to my regular guy (an allergist who specialises in non-surgical sinus treatment, having had sinus disease himself) I went to my ENT surgeon, who'd done my second sinus surgery. He put me on dexamethoson nasal spray, and the rest is history.

I've had no healing of my spinal fusion, and am now taking parathyroid injections daily, and decreasing my thyroid meds to increase my TSH, and working on bone healing. I wear a bone growth stimulator.

I work pretty much full time, excpet for forays to doctors and bodyworkers (feldenkrais mostly).

I deal with a GI tract that is finicky, to say the least, and have been pretty faithfully gluten-free since June (not absolutely totally, because I eat ketchup and some foods that are said to have gluten), but I don't think it's helped much.

And I still have allergic fungal sinusitis, and take antifungals, steroid nasal spray, and amphotericin nasal spray.

But I've never had a spinal tap, and while I don't really want to do anything else dramatic for a long time, it might be good to see what the protein is.

Roxie: what made them decide to give you IVIG? Was there a particular test that was abnormal? Did other things that were bothering you get better?

Dahlek: don't you think if I have cancer they'd have found it?