Flu and Armageddon Part 1

Let's start at the beginning, shall we? Last Monday my back started hurting. By the end of the day I was in a ton of pain and felt exhausted. The next morning I woke up feeling worse. It hurt in my chest to take a deep breath, and my back was in excruciating pain. It felt like pain was just radiating from the inside out, like flu body aches rather than muscle pain. It was so bad that Adam stayed home from work, and by that afternoon I was in seeing my doctor.

He said he wasn't too concerned, and it was likely a virus. He ordered blood work and also offered me a pneumonia vaccine (because I have a history of asthma). I accepted his offer without really thinking. Once home I started feeling even worse, and that night I started having violent chills and a fever. Then a migraine settled in. And it was one of the worst migraines of my life. Tuesday night I was up the entire night in misery. I was too uncomfortable to sleep.

On Tuesday evening I also started receiving my lab results online. 3 numbers were showing up as abnormal, so I emailed my doctor about it. They were markers for inflammation.

First thing Wednesday morning I called my doctor's office and had a message sent to him by the advice nurse. I felt awful. My arm was incredibly sore and stiff from the vaccine. An unrelenting migraine, and episodes of extreme shivering. I tried a hot bath a couple times and I could barely get in I was shaking so much. By early afternoon on Wednesday we were heading to the ER. I still hadn't heard anything from my doctor's office.

In the ER my temp was 102.9. When the nurse asked me if I was sensitive to light, I told her I didn't think I could really open my eyes to find out. I told Adam I was trying really hard not to cry. I hate scary health-related things, and feeling that sick was just making me kind of scared.  I got checked in pretty quickly and they ran my bloodwork and gave me IV fluids. They said they had seen a few cases of a flu-like virus just that day, and I looked like I had it. My blood work showed I was low on potassium, so I was given 2 giant potassium horse pills to swallow. The nurse offered to break them in half for me, but they were not coated so 2 got stuck in my throat and she had to shove jello in my mouth to get it to go down. Blech. Adam and I sat and waited. I had taken motrin at home and the nurse also gave me Tylenol, so my headache finally began to subside. I felt like I was living again! The doctor came to release me and prescribed Norco for all the pain.

As he was walking away I called out to him. I had one tiny little question. My arm had been killing me for the past day, ever since my vaccine. I explained to him that after a tetanus shot, it feels like someone punched you in the arm for a few days. After this pneumonia shot, my arm felt like it had been shot. (Not that I know how this feels!) But seriously it was so incredibly sore. And I could no longer raise my arm. He looked at my arm and felt it, and said "Hmmmm" with a concerned look. He said it looked like an infection starting under my skin, because not only was it starting to get red, but it was hot and slightly raised. He sent me home with a prescription for Doxycycline, an antibiotic that would hopefully stop the infection from spreading. Oh and by the way, it would likely turn me bright red as a lobster.

We managed to run into my wheelchair in the parking garage with our car, but we made it home just after dinner. I got a short message during this time from the my doctor's assistant saying that I could schedule an appointment to come in if I would like. So helpful.

The In-N-Out we got on the way home sounded and tasted awful once we were home. I started feeling worse again. Wednesday night was a repeat of the previous night. Pain, pain, and more pain. During the night I took Norco, Tylenol, and Imitrex. Nothing gave me relief from the body aches and migraine and now-swollen painful arm.

This was my arm on Thursday:

It was burning up to the touch. And even a gentle touch was painful.

Thursday I lay around most of the day, and my body aches gradually started to ease up. By the evening I was feeling pretty OK. I drank a big glass of Calm Magnesium before bed to hopefully sleep and I finally did get 3 hours!

Here was my arm Friday morning.

The redness and swollen patches had spread down my arm. So now I was dealing with this awful flu and this awful infection at the same time. The flu symptoms (with the exception of awful chills and fever-like feeling) seemed to be getting better while the arm was getting worse. That morning someone called me from Kaiser to ask how I was doing. I explained that my armed seemed worse. She said ok someone will call you back today. Nobody ever did.

By Friday evening my arm looked worse. I had now been on antibiotics for almost 3 full days but didn't see any improvement. And I was having shooting paints up the back of my neck into my head. I felt awful again. Plus all the wonderful digestion side effects that come with most antibiotics. So I called an advice nurse again. She consulted with a doctor who was concerned about my infection. So they sent me back to the ER to figure out this crazy Armageddon thing.

To be continued....