Finally the big day was yesterday. Rheum was a nice young woman who spent a lot of time with me and took a very extensive, detailed history and was esp. interested in the start and progression of this whatever I have. She is thinking more along the lines of RA and PA (I have medical history of P and familial history of P and PA) rather than lupus but she's not discounting it. I had xrays done of hands/wrists and feet/cankles. Then off to the lab for 7 vials of blood. I tried to read the order upside down while tech was doing the draw. I did see RF, Vit D, ANA, Metabolic Panel, CRP, and sed rate among the whole sheet of tests. I did make an appt with a derm as well since she wants to be 100% clear that the crappy looking rash on the instep of my right foot is psoriasis. I think if it is, it will swing the dx to PA unless something shows up on RF. So its hurry up and wait. I couldn't get into the derm until Aug 25.
So that's the excitement and it's a relief that I was not dismissed out of hand. There was a woman in the waiting room with me. She was with her husband and she was highly agitated. Judging from what I was able to overhear (and she was being pretty vocal about it), she's at the end of her rope for a dx. She said if this doctor just shined her on, she was jumping into her car and heading northwest and not stopping until she got to Mayo. Kinda wonder how her appt went.