Entries Tagged 'Health' ↓

As I posted here last month, I’d been down for a couple of weeks with the rockin’ pneumonia and the boogie-woogie flu. It sucked. Probably the worst couple of weeks of my life, in fact. I don’t remember EVER being that sick before, including having the mumps when I was a kid. I had this constant, terrible cough associated with the pneumonia, which would keep me awake at night and was just so bad that at times I’d cough so hard that I thought my insides were going to come out. NOT good. And the worst part about it was once I’d start coughing it was hard to stop, even with the aid of cough medicine. Well, the cough continued until about the 23rd or 24th of the month, and my Doxycycline prescription ran out on the 25th. Not long after I’d started coughing, I started feeling pain in my chest, right along my rib cage on my left side. The pain would subside only when I wasn’t coughing or moving. But each cough, sneeze, twist or turn in bed would hurt, sometimes pretty badly (especially during hard coughs or sneezes). Well, a week and a half after I’d pretty much gotten completely over the pneumonia, the pain was still there, so I went to see my doc yesterday and it turns out I have something called costochondritis. It’s basically an inflammation of the cartilage that connects your ribs with your sternum. It causes sharp pain in the costosternal joint — where your ribs and breastbone are joined by rubbery cartilage. Pain caused by costochondritis may mimic that of a heart attack or other heart conditions, and seeing as how I have Mitral Valve Prolapse, I figured it was a good idea to get this pain checked out just to make sure it wasn’t anything serious. I figured it had something to do with my ribs and muscles due to all the coughing I’d done, so I was somewhat relieved to hear that this would go away in a few weeks, and the doc put me on a prescription of naproxen to help alleviate the inflammation and pain. So I’m hoping to be over this soon. Wish me luck!

Well it’s now been two weeks and I can honestly say I feel better. This has been one of the worst sicknesses ever for me. I usually get one, maybe two colds per year, and since they’re usually the sinus cold-type, I might have one or two bad days and then a couple weeks of sinus issues to deal with, but overall no big deal. Well, this was completely different. I’m not used to daily fever, terrible fatigue and body aches and coughing. Really bad coughing. I found out last Friday that my flu (which is an upper respiratory illness itself) had evolved into either bronchitis or pneumonia, which isn’t unusual at all. Not sure which since the doc didn’t seem to see the point in getting a chest X-ray since he knew putting me on this new, stronger antibiotic would knock either one of them out. He also gave me some cough syrup with codeine which helped tremendously in getting more rest at night, even though I was still having the occasional coughing fit. Last night, though, was quiet. I slept soundly from Midnight ’til 6:30 a.m. First time in two weeks! So I’m feeling better… not entirely out of the woods yet as I can still feel the congestion in my chest, but I bet I’ll be over this completely in a few more days. It’ll be nice to get back to my regular routine and also get back to podcasting. I’m already going on a week late for my latest episode of Savage Kick. I plan on getting to work on that tonight, in fact. The scary thing about this kind of cold is that the flu and eventual pneumonia was what killed my grandfather in the winter of ‘32 when he was just 35 years old. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster (and WWII) for antibiotics!

Sorry I’ve been MIA lately, but I came down with the flu. I don’t even remember the last time I had the flu, not to mention being THIS sick. It’s fucking awful. We’re talking constant, daily fever (right around 101-102 degrees), body aches, chest congestion, a really nasty cough that gets so violent at times I’m afraid I’m going to start seeing blood, and, well, that’s about it. But that’s all it’s taken to completely knock me on my ass for a good week now (I originally came down with it last Sunday but didn’t feel really bad until the following Tuesday afternoon). I went to see the doc (some substitute doc since mine was on vacation, naturally) and got prescribed a couple of drugs that really made no effect, plus he told me to take Clariton and said to continue with the Ibuprofen for the fever. So I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping, coughing, drinking water, sleeping, coughing, drinking hot tea, sleeping, coughing, moaning, groaning, sleeping, coughting, ad nauseum. Luckily, Miles just got over something similar (not sure if he had the flu but it was a very similar respiratory illness with a bad cough) and Gina had her flu shot so it hasn’t effected her at all (thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for that!). I do have a few things I’ve been wanting to post about, but I’m not quite there yet physically to put much effort into posting, but I wanted to at least post something here so people didn’t think I was dead. OK, that’s enough for now. More later.

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