(joyful upbeat music)
(cheerful music)
- Good morning, everyone.
Today, I am partly star in this vlog.
It's gonna be me, and my dad, and somewhat, Jake,
and somewhat mother.
'Cause he's my co-star,
- I'm mostly the star. - (humming)
- Okay, let's go do stuff. - I guess I'm a co-star.
- Hey right now we're gonna go down a slide.
- That is made for little kids.
- I am on the way to my allergists,
and I wanted to give a little health update for you.
'Cause things have been happening.
I went in on Monday to get my second shot of Dupixent,
which is an injection.
And while I was there,
I mentioned that my eye had been hurting,
'cause my my right eye had been hurting.
And one of the side effects of Dupixent,
it's very rare,
but one of the side effects has to do with your eyes.
And, basically, it can give you pink eye,
but it only happens to like 5% of the patients.
It's rare, it doesn't happen very often at all.
But, if it does start happening
you have to stop doing Dupixent.
And I talked to my doctor about it.
He said, "oh, usually it's a bilateral thing.
Like both eyes get affected, but I want you
to go see an optometrist and ask them...
Ophthalmologist, I think. Ophthalmologist.
Whatever doctor can actually check the inside of your eye
and use all their fancy tools to figure out
what your eye is doing.
So he said, "I want you to go there and get their blessing
before I give you another shot of this".
So I called all over the place trying to find a place
that would see me quickly.
I got an appointment this morning, went in,
they checked my eyes and they said,
"you actually have a different disease".
I'll put the name of it down here.
"That affects the eye".
She was saying that my eyes have like mucus in them,
like on them.
And that there's redness, not only on my eye,
but on like the eyelid.
And she was like telling me all these things
that are wrong with my eyes that I didn't know about.
But apparently, the Dupixent,
she has seen this with a couple patients,
can sort of elevate the symptoms.
So I had had it before, I took the Dupixent
and then it started like showing up
to a point where I could actually feel it and sense it
and know that there was something wrong.
So, she told me a whole bunch of stuff that I needed to do.
I put a hot compress on my eyes twice a day.
I have eye drops that I put in my eyes four times a day.
Liquid tears is what they're called.
And then eyelid, like wipes that I use.
And I use all three of those things today already.
And my eye feel so much better, like so much better.
And she said, I could still get the Dupixent shots.
So I'm gonna go in right now.
I guess I should mention that
if you haven't seen my earlier health update videos.
I've been dealing with chronic idiopathic urticaria.
Basically, it means mystery hives that won't go away
no matter how hard you try.
And there's no medical reason for them to be there.
And they're really itchy and painful
and keep you awake at night.
And that's what I've been doing.
But, today it getting the approval to get the shots,
and me like driving to get the shots right now,
I don't know, it's like a...
Sometimes all you need is like a little bit of hope.
You get a little bit of hope
and your whole day feels better.
And that's where I'm at right now.
I feel like I have more energy than I usually do.
I feel more smiling.
There's a little bit of hope.
So that's what I'm going with.
I'll let you know how the shots go today.
It's a two hour wait period.
So they give me the injections.
There's two injections, one on each arm.
And then I sit there in their office for two hours
and they make sure I don't go into any sort of
Anaphylactic shock or anything like that.
I'm completely off of the Prednisone,
so I'm not taking that anymore.
I am completely off of the Montelukast
that was giving me nightmares again.
So we'd stopped that.
I'm now on an Antihistamine, Pepcid, and Dupixent.
My hives are still here.
I had one day that was kind of clear.
That felt good, but mostly not good.
Mostly itchy,
and I don't know,
it's like your whole being sort of buzzes
when you've got hive everywhere.
It doesn't sound like it's a big deal
to have like itchiness,
but when your whole body feels it at all at the same time,
and you can't sleep at night,
and you're irritable with people like...
And you don't wanna be, like you wanna be nice and pleasant
and to be around and you're being kind of like irritable
and then you have to apologize and you feel bad.
It's not good.
It affects your, like your whole life in a weird way.
So, I don't know.
It's hard to describe, but I feel hopeful now.
I feel good.
These shots, they tend to take a few doses
before they they start really showing
that they're gonna work or not.
So, my doctor said,
"oh, you, you had one good day, that's good.
Maybe next time you'll have two, three good days.
Maybe the next time you'll have a week of good days.
And then it'll just always be good days".
So that's the plan, and now I'm driving to the doctors.
(gentle upbeat music)
- Met the allergist. Got my injection.
And I was wrong.
The first injection was two. Two injections.
One in each arm.
The second one is just one.
So I got my one injection
but I still have the two hour wait.
So that's what I'm doing now.
You don't have to watch me wait.
(gentle upbeat music)
(speaking gibberish)
(indistinct)
- [Jessica] It's beautiful.
(speaking gibberish)
- Hi. That's so cool.
- Yeah?
- What are you drawing?
- This. - That?
- Ah. - Very cool
(gentle upbeat music continues)
(playful music)
- We're riding bikes.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
(playful music continues)
Ready for me to start biking?
Well it's time.
Ready? Here.
(upbeat music)
- It's blue.
Blue for some reason.
Everything's so blue.
- Jacob, come here.
Everything's so blue.
What?
Something wrong?
- It's fine.
Oh, as you can see we're biking.
It's pretty fun.
- This was my idea for the show.
(upbeat music continues)
- Yeah, I am back home now and it went well.
I have no reaction from the Dupixent, so that's good.
He actually prescribed me an antidepressant
that he found reduces itching.
So I'm not taking the dose that's high enough
for it to be an antidepressant.
I'm taking it lower dose, which should reduce itching.
I've never heard of that before,
but worth a try because I can't sleep at night.
I'm too itchy.
But overall, really, really good.
And I heard the boys were vlogging
while I was at the doctor's office,
so I'm looking forward to seeing that footage.
I'm feeling very hopeful.
I'm feeling like maybe this will work.
At the very least I'm still able to take it and try it
because with the Xolair I had to stop
because I had a bad reaction to that one.
So, we'll see.
We'll see what happens.
Anyway, thanks for watching today,
and we will see you next time.
(giggles)