As I carefully avoid gluten and dutifully do my physical therapy exercises, not to mention generally taking care of my body, I’m trying to be aware of the small improvements. I’d love to wake up tomorrow and feel fantastic, but I know that won’t happen, so I want to be realistic about small wins.
Today’s small win is against my staircase. I live on the third floor of my apartment building. I only considered a third floor apartment because there was an elevator in the building. Of course, when the elevator breaks down (which happens more than you’d think) then I 
have to take the stairs.
My knees started to bother me on stairs and hills many years ago, probably around 1999. Earlier that year I’d climbed the stairs up La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona – I later discovered it was about 450 stairs. By the next year, a single flight was incredibly painful. As I’ve been strengthening my muscles, I’ve hoped to be able to climb more stairs without feeling like my knees are filled with jelly.
The goal was never to climb 450 stairs again. I mean, I wouldn’t complain if I had that option, but again, I’m trying to be realistic. I figured that if I could climb the stairs to my third floor without any pain, that would be amazing. I have been working on this for a while now. I won’t say that it’s completely painless, and I don’t even try it when I’m carrying anything 
heavy, but when I reach my floor, I can actually walk down the hall without limping, and within a few minutes the aches are gone! Even better, I can get to the third floor without that jelly feeling! And for the first time in the 6 years that I’ve lived here, I can now climb all the way from the 1st floor to the 3rd without having to stop and rest on the way up!!
I’m not running up 5 flights of stairs, I’m not looking for stairs instead of elevators everyplace I go, and I’m not choosing the stairs when I’m carrying extra weight, but for me, this is a WIN!
Posted by chronicrants 
undifferentiated connective tissue disease. This doesn’t mean a whole lot, but vague as it is, it’s more than I had before. Hypothyroid came around age 26 and Hashimoto’s was around age 31. There were others in there too, but they were smaller. Then again, I thought most of these were pretty small, too. After all, hypothyroid didn’t mean anything more than taking a pill every morning. And according to my doctor, Hashimoto’s had the same treatment as hypothyroid. PCOS also didn’t mean much until I was ready to have kids, which hasn’t happened yet. And IBS is a nice name and all, but the only treatment is diet, and I was really left on my own to figure that out, aside from the somewhat-useful-in-a-very-limited-way pamphlet I got from the doctor. No, the big one was definitely the connective tissue diagnosis.
symptoms and their permanence in my life. I had a good handle on things. So why did my world turn upside down again with that diagnosis? Suddenly I was going through the 
everything.
until a few months ago.
learning never ends. I am reading constantly, following blogs and tweetchats, trying my best to figure out which is the best approach to take. I am talking to alternative practitioners to learn about their different approaches. [I’ve been amazed at how willing they are to spend 1/2 hour on the phone telling me about what they do – the traditional doctors I contact don’t do this.] I am 
Chronic Rants 