Hi There!

My name is Lew Newmark.        

I am 53 years young, married to my beautiful wife of 28 years Susan.

I have a daughter, Samantha, who is always the apple of her father’s eye.

I now have my daughter's two cats living here with us now.  The cats names are Estaban, who has a very strange tail, which has a tendancy to be flipped upwards, and he always looks like he is trying to spray with it. And the other new addition is named Bibi, and she is a very skittish female to say the least, but both cats have adjusted to living here with us now.

I have a home somewhere in upstate NY…

My Story

It begins back around 17 years ago. I had just started my job with the company I presently work for ( which I will not mention here ) and I seemed to have had a reaction to a mixture that was mixed for a carpet cleaner, which was obviously used to clean the carpets in the factory offices. The reaction was so bad, I found myself at a local hospital, having a chest x-ray.  With the diagnosis of Sarcoidosis,  brought about due to the chest x ray which showed what might have been cancer. A lung biopsy was performed, and the result was Sarcoidosis.

I started using an inhaler ( I forget which one now ) for about a year and a half and my symptoms subsided, so I stopped using an inhaler. I also stopped going to see the doctor ( actually specialist ) and was fine for several years.

For several years, I continued to have problems with my lungs

In October of 07, I started to experience problems with my nose. At first, I would just have some problems breathing, and I started to use nasal strips, and this seemed to alleviate the problem at first, but then the problem became chronic. I had started to use nasal sprays to keep my nasal passages open, which led to my having chronic sinusitis.

I went to see a nasal specialist near the end of October, and after an examination was told that I had nasal polyps.

I was put on prednisone, on a taper schedule that would last for almost a month. The prednisone worked and the polyps were gone for the moment.

This would be my first time using prednisone, but I would later find it would not be my last.

Last year, my asthma condition started to get progressively worse. I was seeing a specialist for the asthma. I was having lung tests performed every few weeks. I was prescribed advair, at first at the smaller dosage, and than about two months later the prescription strength was increased.

The asthma had gotten so bad, that it was waking me up in the middle of the night.

I started to keep my inhaler at my bedside just in case for emergencies, of which I wound up having three, where I almost bought the farm due to my not being able to breath.

The specialist who at the time was treating me, was just doing the usual things with someone who had chronic asthma…except ordering a ct scan of my chest.

I was also at the time dealing with acid reflux, which was a problem only due to the fact that my insurance would not cover the maintenance med that I was taking, which was prevacide.

Here’s where I shorten the story just a bit…in May, I found myself admitted into the hospital with phenomia in my lower left lung, and the acid reflux still raging.

After two weeks ( more or less ) I was released and in decent health….Memorial Day weekend, I was awoken by my stomach at five am, with intense pain and a high spiking fever. Sunday I was back in the hospital, I was diagnosed with having c-diff, and some kidney stones ( two to be exact ) and a hidden little problem that I wasn’t aware of at first….increased whit blood cell counts.

After being in the hospital for a week, a kidney biopsy was performed and sent for testing, and the results were a diagnosis of a condition that I had never heard of before…Churg Strauss Syndrome.

Two weeks later, I was released from the hospital and sent home with twelve different meds including new prescriptions for Cytoxan, and a tapered prescription for prednisone, this was in the middle of June.

The present….
after a few months of continued progress, I am only on three meds as of this writing…

Prednisone at around 10mgs
Immuran at 20mgs
and I’m still on the advair, which I actually just started to use again due to my asthma systems starting to emerge again.

This is my story, my beginning if you will with a disease that I have never heard of before, but am becoming very aquainted with at this time.

There is no cure for css, and while there is a mortality rate associated with this disease, the best that I and others like myself who suffer with this can hope for is remission of the condition thru drugs, rest and doctors who actually know how to work with the disease…and of course there is always hope

And I was diagnosed as being Pre-Diabetic back in August of 2008.

I work a full time job, and I’m also a blogger ( as you can tell from this blog! ).

I also run an online Ebay store, play the Drums ( Thank You Neil Peart! ) read tons of comics ( yes, I know I’m 51 and I still love to read a good comic! ) play the occasional video game ( Guitar Hero, Soul Calibur IV ) and I love my Amazon Kindle!

My past is strewn with lot's of adversity. Some of this has been left behind, while some things are still having to be resolved in my present.

My future is all about spreading awareness of Vasculitis and Churg Strauss Syndrome, and spreading that awareness through my blog, Lew Newmark: My Domestic Life

I also intend to leave my job at ( and I finally feel that's it's time to reveal my place of torment ) Belmay by the end of the year 2013 to persue my career of spreading awareness and at that point in time I should be earning a full time living from my blog and other online business ventures.