December 27, 2017. This is a very quick update which I am attempting to do from my phone and I am hoping it will work. I do not blog much but I want to assure everyone that I am still doing well. It has been about a couple of years since my last post, and I just want everyone to know that while I may have gained five or 10 pounds I am still at a healthy weight or right on the verge of healthy BMI range. My breathing continues to be good and despite very subtle crackling that doctors can hear in the lower lobes of my lungs, I don’t really notice anything going on with my lungs. (It May still be there technically, but it does not adversely affect me.)
That being said my ILD (the NSIP or Non-Specific Interstitial Disease) is probably being caused by the several autoimmune diseases I have been diagnosed with including PMR (Polymyalgia Rheumatica) as well as RA perhaps. I was diagnosed in February of 2016 with LGL Leukemia (beta), which sounds worse than it is, because it is chronic leukemia rather than acute leukemia, and I am told that people live for decades with LGL Leukemia. The biggest concern is trying not to get an infection, since I have a very low white blood cell count (neutropenia) and especially low Neutrophils at approximately one-fourth the level they should be. One doctor told me recently, another way to think about this disease is to think of it as Lymphocytosis rather than Leukemia, because what’s happening is my lymphocytes are crowding out my Neutrophils for some reason.
Anyway, my walking routine has been a little more intermittent over the last few months than usual, mainly due to some knee problems I went through and my arthritis,  which has been acting up in both my feet and hands. While I had an almost perfect month in October, I did have a perfect November in terms of walking 5 miles/day and hitting my 3 goals daily on my activity app on my Apple Watch. But we had a big snow (12 inches) on December 8 and that blew my chance for a perfect month because I couldn’t get out and exercise. So, with the holidays and all I have been taking it a bit easier over the last several weeks. However, my goal is to get back to a perfect month in January 2018, walking 5 miles a day and continuing to do the 5:2 Fast Diet that I’ve been doing for the most part successfully for years. (See other posts below for details on that diet.)
I keep remembering back to when I was first diagnosed with ILD and was out of breath walking very short distances and I asked my pulmonologist what I could do, and he said that I could walk. And I took that as a challenge and began WALKING religiously! At first it was only a mile on the treadmill and it was painful and difficult, but then it got easier and I began to extend my goals in small increments until I gradually made it up to 5 miles a day. Then I moderated that goal to just make sure my watch recorded me walking 5 miles during the course of a day. So, often I only have to walk 2 to 3 more miles when I come home after working to reach my daily activity goals. I firmly believe walking through the pain early on is what allowed me to extend my walking and put my lung disease in a remission-like state. Basically, that was my treatment — WALKING! I highly recommend it to everyone!
Best wishes to ALL for a Healthy and Happy New Year!