Happy Friday!  I am soooooo happy it is Friday, because I get to sleep in tomorrow.   This week has been, well… strange.  With trepidation I started my Methotrexate treatment last Saturday and was excited on Sunday because I had a noticeable LACK of side effects.  I had the morning gastrointestinal upset, but then the rest of the day was one of the best of the week.  I was psyched to find that I could take this med without serious side effects, but Mtx is a sneaky sneaky drug.  It’s side effects are slow and covert and by the time they catch up with you, you might not even connect them to the drug.  I’m not sure if the exhaustion I experienced this week was related to the RA or the Mtx, but it was a new thing.  It wasn’t fatigue, I’ve had that and I can push through it.  No, this was the kind of exhaustion where you are not sleepy, but you feel like just lifting your arms to wipe the dish you just washed is a major effort.  It’s like maybe your arms, legs, and head just got 75% heavier and you have to get acclimated to that.  I stood at the sink last night and literally began to cry I was so uncharacteristically exhausted.  Unbelievable.  Next morning, I was fine [after getting out of bed, that is].   That’s the other thing, waking up this week was extremely hard.

Now, in defense of the Mtx., it could have been that I worked nearly 14 hours on Monday, another 11 on Tuesday, 9 on Wednesday, and then stayed up until nearly 2 Wed night having a protracted and dramatic argument with Bean.  By Wed., I was near the edge, by Thursday… I was fried.  Clearly, I need to take more time to rest on this drug.  At the very least, I need to make it a point to get to bed on time when I am working lots of hours, but there aren’t enough hours in the day sometimes for me to finish all I need to get done.  Bean says that maybe I need to be alert for depression, since my behavior and exhaustion could be related to depression [and apparently depression goes hand in hand with RA like peanut butter and jelly], but I don’t think that’s the case, because it would be all the time and not just near the end of the day 2 or 3 days out of the week.

Water under the bridge, since things got better Friday and today.  So, here it is… time to take my Methotrexate again.  I’m having some tea and millet toast to have something on my stomach and I have had a really good Saturday.  We’ll see what week 2 of this adventure brings.

I’d love to hear what others have experienced as side effects from Mtx.  Leave a comment is you’ve taken it and let me know what you experienced.  It seems different for everyone and most report less side effects with the injectable Mtx.  I am taking pills.