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sunrise on my street! |
I’ve been living the last few days at its basest level…sleep,
eat, take pills, converse with Rob for a few minutes and repeat, it seems. Just
when you think you’ve got the whole sickness thing down, you get thrown a loop
to see how unfunctional you can really become. I don’t know what I picked up back
east on my trip but it is a doozy, let me tell ya.
It all started about Monday afternoon, when I was doing
laundry and I bent over to put more clothes in the dryer and it felt like my
head and the rest of my body didn’t want to come back up with me when I went to
stand back up. You know, that weird dizziness that heralds an alarm that
something just isn’t right. That was
shortly followed by the beginnings of a headache that has now turned into a continuous
dull roar that analgesics aren’t touching.
Then the lovely body aches started, along with the chills. The last thing to manifest has been this
lovely inability to breathe or rather the feeling that I am breathing through an
ever narrowing straw. Now, just a trip to get a cup of tea or to go to the
bathroom seems like something I should require a field trip permission slip
for.
I went to see my doctor on Wednesday, mostly because Rob
insisted. I have a feeling this is some kind of virus and we all know that
there’s really nothing to be done with them except wait them out. She gave me
one of those z-packs of antibiotics, checked everything and told me that if I continue
to get worse after the pack is done, I need to get back to her. My O2 sats were low but not critical then,
but I can tell you right now those darn pills have done nothing, just as I
suspected they wouldn’t.
As to the cause of all this, there are many things it could
be. I was back east, in a heavily wooded
area where my Mom lives and I got bit by about a zillion mosquitoes. That’s bad enough, as I have almost an
allergic reaction to the bites, they turn into huge sores, even when I don’t
scratch them. These guys seemed to
almost like the bug spray I was constantly putting on, too, it didn’t faze
them! This year is supposed to the worst ever for West Nile Virus, so I’m very
worried about that as a possibility. Also, my mom informed me about halfway
through our visit that there had been a deer mouse infestation in the motorhome
we were staying in so there’s always a possibility of Hantavirus from the dust
they left behind. And, of course, there’s all the strange hotels we stayed in
on the way there and back that could have been harboring who knows what.
Some people say I overreact to all these things, but this is
how I’ve kept myself as healthy and alive as I have for so many years. I’m a
little OCD when it comes to staying away from germs, but it has served me well
and I don’t care what people think, as long as I’m alive to keep having them
harass me about my idiosyncrasies, it’s all good.
So, I guess I’ll be calling the doc back today, since it is
Friday and we all know that if things are going to get worse, they will over
the weekend, good ole Murphy’s Law. I don’t think there’s much she can do at
this point, except maybe give me some sort of inhaler. We’ve still got days and
weeks before some of the tests we’ve done come back.
Rob has been an absolute doll, cooking for me, keeping the
house as clean as he is capable of, with all the work he has to do and calling
me from his job every few hours to check on me during the day. Thistle, young
as she is, has also been just a perfect little puppy, mostly staying with me,
sleeping on my lap and really being a good girl. It’s like she knows I don’t
feel well and so she’s on her best behavior. The only thing she’s gotten into
is a few of Rob’s socks that he left laying around upstairs. She’s been bringing those down to me sporadically,
I think in an attempt to manifest Rob out of one. She never chews them, just
carries them around, the little turd.
Well, I’ve complained enough and I really hate writing on my
laptop, which I’m forced to use right now as the office seems just a little too
far to travel to, even though it’s only about 20 feet from my chair. It’s
Friday, and I do plan to go down to the Moose and visit with my friends for a
bit tonight, come hell or high water. I’m
going to go insane if I have to sit here much longer by myself. I hope you all have a fantastic weekend, get
out and enjoy the fresh air for me.