+Sick and Tired

Yep, I’m sick and tired… of being sick and tired. 😛  Looks like I’m going to be for a while yet, though.

Some friends brought me a thermometer on Sunday, so I could finally see just how bad it was… it was pretty bad. 😛  Temperature was oscillating from 101 to 103.  When it spiked up to 104.2, though, I got scared and called Chris, who took me in to the emergency room.

The doctor there listened to my tale of woe, listened to my lungs, and decided I probably had some kind of lung infection.  "In any case, it just about *has* to be an infection of some sort, viruses don’t generally last this long."  He gave me a powerful antibiotic and called it good.

Problem was, about an hour after I’d taken the stuff, while my temperature was doing better, I also started itching all over.  I called the ER, and they said to stop taking the stuff, take some Benadryl for the itch, and call my family doctor the next day to get a different kind of antibiotic.  (Since my temperature was the lowest it’d been in quite some time, I risked getting in a car to get some Benadryl – it was late at night, and only place in town was open.  No mishaps.)

Next day, I played phone tag with various nurses in my doctor’s clinic… finally someone told me that as long as I didn’t get a rash I should go ahead and take the stuff.  Whatever.

But by today, with the antibiotic having no further discernible effect, and feeling utterly miserable, I reached a point where I couldn’t take it any more.  I called yet another People of Praise sister, an elderly but very active lady, and she agreed to take me in to Immediate Care – which is misnamed, but there you are. 🙂

Finally, I got a doctor willing to actually listen and not just try to hustle me out the door.  This guy was great.  He gave me a pretty thorough checkup, then said, "I want to do a full ‘fever workup’ on you."  They took some blood, had me pee in a cup, and took a chest X-ray.

End result:  I didn’t have to be an expert in reading X-rays to see I had pneumonia.  It was blatantly obvious – a baleful white cloud floating in one of my lungs.  I’ve had pneumonia before, several times, and I’m actually surprised I’m not more miserable than I already am…  When I’ve had it before, I’ve been pretty much flat on my back unable to lift a finger on my own behalf.

The doctor also said my blood tests showed some worrisomely high numbers in liver enzymes.  "If your bilirubin were also high, I’d be testing you for hepatitis.  As it is, I’m not sure just what’s going on."  Best guess is that one of my existing meds, or the combination of them, is irritating my liver.  He made me promise to follow that up with my family doctor sometime next week.

He switched my antibiotic, saying he was really surprised the stuff the ER gave me hadn’t accomplished more.  And he commented, "I hate to give your liver more to process right now, but obviously we can’t leave this pneumonia untreated!"  I’m not going to disagree. 😛

I liked this guy a lot.  And it’s a big relief now to see some light at the end of the tunnel.  As long as I take it really easy and take my antibiotics like a good boy, I know from experience that pneumonia will just curl up and whimper.  It’s only really dangerous untreated.

Oh, Beloved.  I’ve got to lean on you a lot right now.  Please make me patient and humble during this difficult time;  and please let it do much good for the Poor Souls.

It’s really surprising how comforting it’s been, knowing that my suffering isn’t for nothing, that it can do good.  I’ve been clinging to that a lot lately.

P.S.  Today is my birthday.  Yay.  St. John the Baptist, pray for me… and don’t let me lose my head. 😉