Martian Death Flu

Arg. Have been sick now for five days.

The kind of sick where you're too tired to sleep, you can't sit, or lie comfortably, and every breath tastes of your sickness. You're skin is burning but you're shaking so you pull a blanket over your legs and alternate between too hot and too cold. You have no appetite, which means after day three you're dizzy and weird because all you've eaten is half a bowl of Campbell's soup and about seven packets of cough drops. You're too tired to be irritable and your partner knows you're really sick because you aren't even bitching, and you're still lying on the couch staring at the wall after days of it and you're not interested in a movie or a video game or conversation. Your days melt into each other. Your voice goes after a while, then comes back. You cough and your throat is raw from coughing and if you live in Vancouver, like I do, the first question your doctor asks is "Have you been in Toronto lately?" followed by "How about Asia?" before she'll come near you without a face mask.

You're too tired to post much even though you are doing nothing else all day.
Blergh.

The only plus is I'm not nauseated, but my cheerful doctor assured me that the meds she has me on will change all that. "Expect mild nausea," she said. "If the vomiting is bothersome, check back with me and we'll see where you're at."

In an effort to make this a community thread and not just a feel-sorry-for-me-at-a-distance thread, What is the sickest you have ever been?

Hmm... that would be when I was ten, and we moved to Pakistan. I simply could not keep anything in my body for longer than 15 minutes. The doctor never did quite figure out if I had the flu, or a bad reaction to the food, or what it was. But whatever it was, it lasted for 8 days, and then vanished, the day after my doctor threatened to put me on an IV.

Who says bodies don't respond to threats.

And I'd give you a hug, Jade, but, a) I doubt you feel like being hugged, b) I don't want whatever it is you have, and c) you're in Canada.

[img]wink.gif[/img]

But I do hope you kick whatever it is out SOON.

The sickest I've been was exactly the way you described the way you've been feeling. Plus, I felt like I was delirious and halucinating some times. I would fade in and out.

I hope you feel better soon. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I hope you start feeling better soon Jadian.

Most colds or flus go straight to my lungs. I hate the taste of coughing up green and yellow infected phlegm. It's nasty. I'm hoping that since I quit smoking I'll be able to recover from the URIs quicker than usual.

*hugs Jadian*

I guess my sickest would be when I felt a little bad just before bed. Woke up at 3am feeling like a truck had hit me, every part of me ached.

I drove to the emergency room when the idiot...er, doctor told me I was having a asthma attack. Now I've only had one or two full out asthma attacks and neither of them made me think I had been hit by a truck, I just couldn't breathe...

He proscribed drugs. Now at 4 or 5 am, there is no place to get drugs AND I didn't think I was having a asthma attack anyway, so I went home and waited until 8am to call my doctor.

Now all this time I have taken nothing, because I wanted to describe symptoms accurately. Dumb move on my part... After I described symptoms to doc, I wanted tylenol, but they wouldn't give me any, because they were going to proscribe tylenol with codeine for me. *sigh* Meanwhile I had to get my lungs xray'd and turns out I had gone from 0 to pneumonia, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

So around 4pm I drag my ass home take drugs and sleep for two weeks. It was sort of amusing, every four hours the medication would wear off and I would wake up, took about a half hour to kick back in once I retook it. So I would hop on the net and everyone would tell me to go back to bed. [img]wink.gif[/img]

Feel better soon, Jade.

Last time I got sick like that was back in December when I was in Orlando...I couldn't get out of bed for the pngest time, save to lose what little was in my stomach...cost me a trip to Islands of Adventure Theme Park and made the flight home the next day a little more interesting...my girlfriend still doesn't let me live down the fact that I kept us from going to that park...

I hope you feel better, Jade...

So I got a secondary infection. After one day - ONE DAY! - of feeling better, I get sick again. I go to the doctor again. "My throat hurts," I say. "I can't swallow, it hurts too much."
"Open up," she says. Then "Uh-oh."
"Ugghhhh-ugh?"
She takes the tongue depressor out and steps back. "Did you have your measles shots?" she asks. "Any fever?"
"Uhm, yes. Two days ago. 102. I dunno about the shots. Why? Is it measles?"
"Any neck pain, stiffness?"
"Yes. Why? Is it measles?"
"Stiff neck could mean Meningitis. Been near any children lately?"
"Yes. I went to the Finding Nemo matinee. Why, is that how you get Meningitis?"
"Show me your hands and take off your shoes."
She inspects my palms and the soles of my feet, muttering. I am really freaked out by this point. No doctor has ever in my memory looked at my feet because I have a sore throat.
"Hmm," she says. "Good news here."
"What?"
"You don't have hand-foot-mouth disease."
"I don't even eat beef!"
She laughs. "No, nevermind. Not mad cow, don't worry. Not SARS either. I'm going to put you on these antibiotics..."
"Doctor, what's wrong with me?"
"Well, I'm sending you to get some blood work done. I'd like to know if you have measles, meningitis, or chicken pox."
"I've HAD chicken pox. When I was five."
"Oh. Well," she says cheerfully, "Maybe it's just good old Herpes."

The people in the waiting room, apparently, could hear me screaming.

*puts on protective clothing and gives Jadian a hug*

Hand/foot/mouth eh?

Edited to add... You did check and make sure this doctor didn't get her license out of a cracker jack box? Right?

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 05, 2003 11:25 PM: Message edited by: AsIs ]</font>

Doctors are eeeeeeeeeeevil. Let's hope for the best (like she gets hit by a bus, falls on a rusty spoon, gets AIDS, and dies) (and that you get better soon).

herpes .... *bursts out laughing* ...

sorry. inside joke.

i'd hug you, but i don't want to get what you have. [img]wink.gif[/img]

feel better soon, chicky. *Sends well wishes*

Bwahahaha!! Poor Jadian. That story gave me a nice laugh. It sounds like a comedy skit. I think your doctor is a quack. How many years has she been practicing medicine? Are you sure that she'd not just an intern? ^^;

Eris, I dunno about that.

I mean, I've had many evil doctors, but I have to say, every doctor I've seen within the last couple years was pretty damn good.
After all, I'm still twitching, and they think they've got this concussion nonsense beat.....

*steps past the circle of posters and gives Jadian a big monster hug* Get well soon hon! I'd give you a big kiss on the cheek too, but you don't really want my kooties, do you...

To the story telling part of this thread:
There was once when I came down with an almighty stomach bug, out of the blue, no warning, and I was uncontrollably sick at both ends. What a nightmare. That lasted for a couple days, and then I slept for a week. But I think the worst in recent history was last semester, while I was in Rome. Our group took a ten day tour of Greece, and near the end I started getting a cold or flue of some sort. I sure as hell don't speak Greek, I can barely read the letters, so I had a hell of a time finding any medicine or vitamins (that is, no luck at all.) By the time we got on the boat back to Italy I was in pretty bad shape. By the time we got back to campus it had spread to sinuses, lungs, and ears. So I went to this little Italian doctor who spoke no English. Two other students with a medical dictionary translating between us. Wow. He gave me antibiotics, some killer cough syrup, and drop for my ears. I was almost completely deaf in both ears for a week and a half. I sat at the front of the room in all my classes and took no notes, having a time of it just to figure out what the teacher was saying in the lecture. I'm not sure my professors appreciated my sitting so close. I got better pretty quickly though, and thank God, because I have heard horror stories about the hospitals there from friends who broke bones or came down with serious pneumonia.

Anyway. GET BETTER SOON JADIAN!!!! Don't let the mad doctor get you down!

Jadian, I hope you feel better soon! *hug*

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">"Oh. Well," she says cheerfully, "Maybe it's just good old Herpes." </font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, I'd be glad the doctor is looking beyond the obvious upper respiratory infections. Better to investigate and identify early rather than let things fester...

That conversation with your doctor reminds me of my worst illness -- it started with me running a fever of 104.1 degress(!!!!) for three days, with several days of 101-102 tempertures prior and after. I think I was feverish for about ten days, but I really don't remember much of that whole period.

Needless to say, I was beyond completely miserable. I could not move, what with the fever and the body aches. My cousin said I was delirious most of the times she would wake me to pour tylenol down my throat (she went out and bought the liquid children's stuff, because she couldn't get me to swallow the pills). I went through five boxes of tissue. My dominant memory of the time was that I had uncontrollable chills, even with nine blankets/comforters piled on top of me.

For some reason, I didn't go to the hospital. The fever breaks, my throat isn't swollen nearly shut and my nose stops running, and I chalk it up to the worst flu I've ever had.

About seven months pass. Since the fever incident, I've had an almost continual series of "colds," I'm constantly fatigued, so much so that eventually I'm sleeping 20 hours a day, and still zombie-ish in the four hours I'm awake. I'm constantly short of breath, and my chest hurts, along with every other muscle in my body. I finally catch a clue and go to a doctor. (Hey, I was in my "invincible 20-year old" mindset.) I test negative for the common bacterials, the recent flu strains, and for mono and pneumonia.

The doctor sends me to have more tests. For what? "Leukemia and AIDS."

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH.

I'm happy to report both tests were negative. Eventually they discovered I did have mono -- just not the Epstein-Barr virus version, which IIRC is 95% of the cases. I had the CMV version (don't remember the the long un-acronym), which, "by the way, is much more severe and lengthy than the Epstein-Barr mononucleosis."

And of course there's nothing that "treats" a virus. I just had to drop out of school until I could get out of bed. The doctor notified the university and they even let me retroactively drop all the classes in the term we had almost finished, thankfully, since I was failing every one. I ended up missing another two terms.

But hey, I didn't have cancer or AIDS!

Hmm. The sickest I have ever been... About two years ago I came down with a weird strain of the flu. At first, it was just regular flu misery, but it changed when my throat swelled and I started to throw up everything I ate or even drank. My appetite was non-existant. I could barely force myself to even drink a bit of water. The nausea became bad enough that I went to the doctor about it all several times. She put me on compozine. I had a horrible pain in my chest that felt like I'd been beaten on just above my ribs. Several days later, my mother dragged me to the emergency room. Found out that the compozine had been making me have seizures (I didn't know what was happening when I'd freeze up, thought it was a muscle spasm). I had a really bad one while I was in the ER. Fortunately, the doctor on call knew what to do. He ordered a shot of Benedryl, and a few minutes later I found myself wheeled into a tiny stock room (they had no more room for beds), and strapped to a cold IV.

They said that I was severly dehydrated, and that if I hadn't made it to the ER within a couple of days that I could have died. And there I thought I had the flu. o.o;

GeekGirl, I'm glad things turned out ok. It really does pay to see the doctor when you are that sick. A friend of mine was sick like that and kept putting off going to the doctor until she was practically unable to stand and when they tested her, she DID have leukemia.

*shudders*

She recovered though. Glad that wasn't the case with you.

Yeah, well, now they're looking at mono. Seems that I've had three infections in a row, one right after the other, and I tried rollerblading the seawall today, and that was just about the dumbest thing I've ever done because at the very furthest point from any kind of road/path/busroute I fell and couldn't get up because my legs were shaking too badly. It's just so beautiful here, we're at 26 degrees and cloudless sky and I live near Stanley Park which is a rainforest and English Bay which is a beach next to the rainforest, and I've been stuck inside for weeks and friends came into town and I stopped listening to my better judgement.
So. House ridden again, but only from fatigue, thank God. I'm really feeling much better. Just too much too soon.

Thanks for all the well wishes, everyone [img]smile.gif[/img]

get better, dammit!

STAY IN BED!! Knuckly-head.

Roller-blading along seawalls?!?

Sheesh.

Glad you're feeling better. :)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by GeekGirl:

I'm happy to report both tests were negative. Eventually they discovered I did have mono -- just not the Epstein-Barr virus version, which IIRC is 95% of the cases. I had the CMV version (don't remember the the long un-acronym), which, "by the way, is much more severe and lengthy than the Epstein-Barr mononucleosis."

CMV = Cytomegalovirus

[img]graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

your friendly neighbourhood Lab Rat [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Roller blading along seawalls? Man, I envy some of you for the cities you live in. *sighs*

Get better soon.

man, If *I* went rollerblading in MY condition, my friends would not let me out of the apartment for a week. I'd be tied to the couch with industrial rope and duct tape.

Jadian, don't hurt yourself!!! get better!!! *hugs*

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Chaos Butterfly:


CMV = Cytomegalovirus

[img]graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

your friendly neighbourhood Lab Rat [img]tongue.gif[/img] </font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yep, that was it. Thanks, CB. I actually remembered the "-megalovirus" part, because I remembered thinking that I was being infected by delusions of power.

Hmm. That would explain quite a bit, actually. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Jadian, I do hope they figure it out soon. Mono sucks, but as your doctor and mine pointed out, much nastier things go along with those symptoms. Anyway, if you do have mono, be prepared for your immune system to be depressed for quite a while. It took me a few years to stop catching everything that came along.

hey, Jadian, how are you feeling?

With her hands, of course. Why, how do *you* feel?

Y'know, I thought I wanted to meet y'all in person, but I'm not so sure now.... [img]wink.gif[/img]

Not sure what the sickest I've been. The flus that last a week or the 24-hour thing. Usually just bodyaches, headaches, not wanting to eat, wanting to throw up, chills. It's especially bad if I'm the only one tending to the kids. When they're in school I can at least sleep all day and let it run through me. But guess who's the one that takes them to school and picks them up? Yep, sick ol' me, driving around with morning and afternoon traffic trying to keep it together.

Then there were the seizures, but that's another story.

The worst illness I ever had was probably last January. Couldn't get off the couch for two or three days. I remember watching the West Wing with three blankets and a quilt around me and still shivering to the point where I could barely speak. Worse yet, I could not smoke or drink coffee, so in addition to the illness, I had nicotine fits and caffeine withdrawal headaches. But I got better and enjoyed good health for two weeks. And then I got the same damn thing again.

But the funniest illness I ever had was the upset stomach I got from eating almost an entire McDonald's birthday cake. I felt fine until I woke up at three in the morning and made a dash for the bathroom. Out came gobs of undigested McBirthday Cake, frosting and all! Maybe it was just my imagination, but I swear I could make out parts of Grimace and the Hamburglar on some of the chunks. It was like the Exorcist in McDonaldland.

All of which reminds me of that age-old question: how come there are no McChurches or McPriests?

(I mean besides the Unitarians...)

take care

---jones

McDonald's makes birthday cakes?

And you ATE one?

McDonald's makes a damn fine birthday cake (or they used to, but the last time I had one was 1989, so I can't say for sure now).

take care

---jones()

Hmmm, wonder if they used the same ingrediants that they use in their shakes that enable them to remove paint from a car?