So you may have noticed I’ve been pretty quiet lately. There’s been some stuff going on.

Last October my vision started to go weird. I’m not great at seeing in the dark anyway, but suddenly I found myself totally night-blind. I was waking up with blurry vision that took a long while (more than 2 cups of coffee) to clear. I thought I was going blind but figured if I ignored it, maybe it would stop happening. I kept it to myself as long as I could but there came a point where I couldn’t ignore it any more and had to go to see the GP, who insisted that I had some kind of eczema around my eyes and an eye infection, wrote me a prescription for some eye-salve and sent me on my way.

Three weeks later and the situation hadn’t improved. I found myself walking around Times Square at midnight wearing shades because the spectacular neon-lighting was so bright it hurt my eyes. When I arrived back home I took myself to the GP again, told her I was really worried my corneas were affected and I needed a referral to the opthamalogist pronto. She reluctantly agreed.

The opthamalogist took a good look at my eyeballs using some really cool equipment and told me my eyeballs were dried out. Did I have Sjögren’s Syndrome?

What the hell is Sjögren’s Syndrome?

Apparently it is a chronic auto-immune disease that affects your mucous membranes— all your mucous membranes including the bursa. Did I ever experience joint or muscle pain?

Doc, I am a Crossfitter, I ALWAYS have muscle pain.

I was given a new prescription, this time for fantastic eye gel which made my little oogly-googlies happier than they’d been in months and told to check in with rheumatology.

The rheumatologist, ordered blood-work which came back from the lab just before Christmas and showed all the markers for Sjögren’s Syndrome. If I really wanted to be sure, I could drive to Groningen (never been, don’t want to go) and let them take a lip biopsy, which may or may not leave my lip without any feeling at all afterward, but no. Just. No. Effing. Way. I’m happy to believe the blood-work.

All the weird stuff I’ve been experiencing, the Crimson Tide, the aches and pains I’d chalked up to going heavy on the lifts and pushing myself too hard, the extreme tiredness,the eczema, burning mouth, and the dry eyeballs are all symptoms of Sjögren’s Syndrome. I’ve been going through what’s known as a “flare”. These can happen at any time and last anywhere from a few days to a few months. There is no cure for this disease, you deal with it by treating the symptoms and keeping stress levels to a minimum (hah!).

So for the past month, I’ve been resting a lot, using my eyedrops, popping Advils when I need them and trying to adjust to the new normal. I haven’t been at the Box since December 20th. I haven’t been running either. This week I had enough energy to walk the dogs and it felt really good.

Still, I am not complaining. Contact lenses are definitely history for me but hey, I’m not going blind! My energy level seems to be increasing daily, I bought new running shoes and next week I’m going to see what I can do in the WOD!