I think their ad says “When it rains, it pours”. I seem to be in the midst of an huge rain storm. Been having strange symptoms of extreme fatigue and breathless with almost zero exertion. I’ve been thru some cardiac studies as recently as just a couple monts or so ago. But after my experience in Pennsylvania and the weird peripheral neuropathy symptoms, I decided to tell my GP once again about it. She took a chest x-ray and scheduled me for an Echo cardiogram. I felt no unusual things and drove myself to Kingsport for the test and all the way back home, about an hour each way. When I started to eat supper I suddenly didn’t feel good but could not say how or why. My hands were uncommonly cold…something very rare for me, and my joints ached. ALL of them.
I ate very little and went to bed early at 10 pm way ahead of my usual 1 a.m.. When Mary came to bed she said I was boiling…and took my temp. 103.5! So I said we’d better go to the ER. I was really feeling bad now and quite addled by it. My wbc in the ER was 16000…a bit high. I am an extremely hard stick for any phlebotomy and they started an IV on me. Then it was down hill and my BP was very low…as in septic shock low. We had even taken out the IV and were ready to go home when the lab came back. They sent me for a chest x-ray and discovered I had pneumonia. I had absolutely no symptoms of pneumonia. When they took a urine specimen it became quite logical. Urosepsis bigtime! And a horrible odor such as I had never experienced before. After fighting to get my BP to an acceptable level without much success, I was admitted to ICU. As a surgeon I was never very fond of ICU…it always meant serious problems and lots of work. I was treated (by the hospital that I used to work in, and the one that was so corrupt) so very well, I still stand in awe. They were just wonderful. Of course, right…barely 20 ft from my window on ground floor, they were putting in a new electric somethingorother, and I had a jack hammer ALL Day Long! I had pain from the uricemia but I also had headaches, both natural and migraine at one time or another. The second night I actually had to call in the nurse and ask if I was hallucinating on the drugs or had a skunk actually sprayed nearby. It was the skunk. Such is life in the boonies. A few days manipulating drugs with the help of culture and sensitivity and having to be catheterized several times and finally with a Foley (indwelling) catheter, I started to improve. I was allowed to go home on oral meds after I was able to void when the catheter was removed. My wbc did go to 26000 on the second day which was unnerving and I started to think SBE, but it never developed. Now I have to jump thru hoops…see the urologist that I’ve been visiting for several years. I’ve had my prostate TURPed twice and per CAT scan, I still have benign prostatic hypertrophy. And the Echo says I have maybe right heart failure. Maybe Finally an answer to what I’ve been chasing for too long and had decided it was the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that few docs even want to concern themselves with. Like I said….I feel some kin to Norton’s salt.
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I’m going to have to check this blob more often. Just finding out now that you’ve been ill again. So sorry to hear that. Hope you are well on the mend by now.
Oh, I think you covered this on your blog. It happens to us. It’s been interesting to say the least. I could write for a month just on what I’ve experienced in the past year. Waiting to find out if it’s CFS or right heart failure at the moment. Been saving for a Segway and now my spine is fusing and I won’t be able to ride the darn thing. I may be forced to buy a new camera.
Sorry to hear about all of this. I suspected that you were ill when I didn’t hear from you for a while. Hope you’re back to normal now.