Three Things You Don’t Know About Me

# 1…I could be on the show Mystery Diagnosis.  For 15 years I’ve had a chronic disease that has no name.  I woke up one morning at the age of 39, and couldn’t get out of the bed because I was so stiff and my joints were so painful.  I couldn’t open and close my hands.  I could barely walk.  My head and neck hurt.  I ran a low grade fever.  I had extreme fatigue.  My hair fell out.  I went to the emergency room…

me not feeling very well...

 

Many tests revealed an auto-immune disease, which is treated by a rheumatologist, but all of the tests have not been conclusive enough to put me into the catagory of a specific disease.  My rheumatoligist calls my disease a “rheumatoid arthritis like” condition.  It doesn’t really matter which specific disease that I have because a lot of the same medications are used for all  auto-immune diseases.  It took about a  year for the doctor to find the correct combination of amedications to get my condition under control and I have been on those same meds for 14 years.  I now live a relatively normal life. 

I adopted these two!

#2… About 5 years ago I volunteered at our local animal shelter.

  As a result of my volunteer work, I am the owner of 4 dogs, 16 cats, 2 rabbits, and a parakeet.    All of these animals are rescues from the shelter with the exception of 2 cats that I previously had.  All of my pets are spayed or neutered, with the exception of the rabbits (kept seperately) and the parakeet!  Everything lives outside except for the parakeet and one cat, who would desperately love to eat that bird!  Unfortunately it costs about $150.00 per month to feed these precious creatures, which doesn’t make my husband very happy…

some of my Chatty Cathy collection

#3…I love dolls, and  I collect dolls of all kinds.  I started out collecting Cabbage Patch Kids about 25 years ago.  I estimate that I have between 35-40 of those.  Next I began collecting Barbie dolls.  I began with the original ones from the 1960′s since I already had 2 from my childhood.  I am not sure of my exact count of Barbie and her family, but it’s around 100.  It was quite a feat to collect the assortment of the original Barbie family(Midge, Alan, Scooter, Ricky, Ken, Francie), now that they are 50 years old!  I followed Barbie with the Chatty Cathy doll family.   I never realized that there  were so many members of her family.  I have 21 of the Chatty Cathy family of dolls–some talk, most don’t.  The final dolls that I added to my collection were baby dolls from my childhood–Tiny Tears and Tiny Thumbelina, only one of each.  I have retired from doll collecting–I think!   

 

Click here to enter your link in the blog hop and view the entire list of entered links…