Sunday, June 13, 2004
 

Remember Me?

That may be a no-blogging record for me. But I have a good excuse, I swear: I've had viral meningitis and have been down for the count.

It started out with me taking extra naps. Then I got a migraine that lingered, and I slept even more. Then the migraine [random interesting article: here] seemed to persist but kind of spread across my head, which puzzled me because my migraines are always one-sided. Then the stiffness came, but I still attributed it all to a migraine gone haywire. Finally, I couldn't sleep one night, and it occurred to me that maybe I should take my temperature. Over that night, I watched it rise about one degree per hour. I eventually came down to the computer, in spite of extreme photosensitivity, and checked WebMD for what I had, by this time, guessed to be the problem. I came in as a walk-in at the student clinic the next morning, was quickly checked in, and soon had three nurses and a doctor hovering around me. The fact that they were wearing SARS masks was not exactly comforting, but, by that point, I was too exhausted to care.

When the doctor came in, I said what I expected to hear, that it was meningitis. I wasn't even upset because I was literally too drained to process what he was saying (it also helped that I knew I'd been vaccinated against the bacterial form of the disease). I heard IV, I heard spinal tap, I heard ER, I heard hospital, and I just kept lying on the bed in the "sick room" (I didn't even realize until later that I hadn't sat up to speak to the doctor) and wishing someone would turn off the one lamp that was on in the otherwise-dark room.

Four words you never want to hear when you get an IV: "Hand me a towel!"

In one of those funny-in-retrospect moments, I passed out in the bathroom of the clinic (my blood pressure was extremely low). When I realized what was happening, I tried to reach for the door (the nurse was outside, and I was afraid I'd pull out my IV), but I thunked against it instead. Two nurses opened the door, and I oozed into the hall. They were wearing SARS masks, and I had to wear one when I was outside the sick room (apparently, from what my addled brain gathered, I had to wear the mask until my bloodwork came back). So two nurses in masks were helping a chick with an IV and a mask who had just fallen into a hallway. I saw the shoes of all the other waiting patients and briefly wondered what was running through their minds. The nurses got me into a wheelchair and back to my nice dark little room.

It's all blurry after that. The doctor said to expect pain and fever to last 3 to 5 days (I'm not sure how long the fever lasted-- I lost complete track of time-- but the pain persisted longer than that) and the symptoms to last 7 to 10. The major fatigue is gone, but I still tire very easily, and being outside in the heat is exhausting.

But I'm much, much, much better. My mother was here to see me through the worst of it and to force fluids (nauseating) on me. And to give me my Lortab, the precioussss.

I posted my previous post during an "up" day of the illness, but I've barely touched the computer from then until now. I think I'm back sniffle home on the web now, though.

At least I'd better be, or heads will roll. I'm tired of being sick.

Elvisette philosophized at 9:56 AM