I've got to give you kids a shout out. Though I long to be a successful one of you one day, I can't help but be overwhelmed with the crapload of unknown you have to deal with. There is nothing worse in my opinion and yes, this leads into whats going on with me lately.
So remember that cold I had? The really bad one that I so cooly managed by calling in an order for some oral antibiotics approximately an hour into mild lung symptoms. Sure I had to overemphasize those mild symptoms a bit to achieve this.. but a few days later I knew I was the bees knees for carrying out this brilliant plan of striking before being stricken.
Recovery went something like this: horrible weird symptoms of nausea (and actual projectile vomiting) and horrible headaches for 3-4 days to the point that i called in to find out if i was overdosing. Apparently the dose was upped however for this drug.. so i was spot on. Finally my body adjusted and I started experiencing a sudden disappearance of my nighttime cough. I pee at 3-4 hour intervals at night. I seriously think this is an issue, but no one has found anything as of yet. Anyways, during these pee times I usually cough as a result of moving myself to the bathroom and i guess shaking up the stagnant mucus from the past few hours of sleep. It is basically a knee-jerk reaction that I cannot control, and at-best, I force it to stay in until I reach the bathroom in the hopes that I won't wake up Mike. After about 5 days of Septra, I was not needing to cough at all when I woke up to pee. Something I tend to notice ONLY on I.v.s these days. There was a very slight tickle, but since I was able to easily overcome it.. I did not cough and enjoyed the ease-back-into-sleep that most healthy people enjoy when they are startled awake. (as opposed to the heart-jolting, eye-bugging result of coughing your brains out.. wakes up your whole system).
ANYWAYS, so this was all going along quite nicely.. until it wasn't. I can't say the turnaround really was blatant.. but when I went to Toronto for a night stay in a hotel a week ago yesterday, I felt sub-par. I look it in the pics too. Oddly, the night-cough was still fairly gone. I did some transplant testing on the Monday and asked if I could do pfts since I was there and hadn't done pfts in a month, but was denied. 3 days later, I woke up at 6am with a stabbing pain in my left side/back which I recognized all-too-well from winter 08 and my last ever day of work. I called clinic and was told to come in immediately for an xray to rule out pneumothorax. The xray showed "no change" from the one I had done a month before for transplant testing. This left it up to symptoms. I felt relatively normal in the individual factors they tend to ask about such as 1.volume of sputum, 2.colour of sputum (i mentioned that it had been brown a few days earlier) 3. frequency of cough 4.appetite and 5.energy level. The beds were also full. So, if I had wanted to be admitted, which I never do, I would've had to sit in emergency in order to get a bed on another floor, which I have never done yet. I settled for some Cipro, as I was pretty sure what happened is that the septra killed my peaceful little s.maltophilia and i was left with my trace pseudomonas that had started a party in its absence.
This is the longest, boringest blog ever.. but I am treating it like a diary because I am so frustrated and want to keep a health record. So I apologize. i promise to put upa silly picture next blog. Ok a picture.. maybe not silly.
Here we are, 4 days after starting Cipro. Pain left after 48 hours of the drug, sputum has been difficult to move (since the pain arrived), but has progressively got lighter, and easier to move. I told the doctor on Thursday that I would come to clinic on Tuesday regardless of how I felt, because I felt it was important to follow up, and see my lung function after these weeks and weeks of dealing with Cold repurcussions.
I'm struggling with this now because I waited till this afternoon to try and book it, and know that the beds are full on the ward still.. sooooo basically if I go to clinic and get a semi-not-great number (as in... .78 versus my last clinic of .84) I won't know what to do because I feel "alright" (I think?) and I don't feel its worth goign through emergency when things are "alright"... and ending up on a different ward where I'll be scared out of my wits because I've only ever had 5 admissions and none of them were off of my regular ward. AHHH. Not to mention I MAY have an appt at the transplant hospital as soon as next week for lung function anyways. Why not just wait and then assess myself then? Maybe even then the beds will be empty if I should need one? I also still have over a week of cipro left.. I'll be "safe" in terms of holding down the infection to at least a manageable level, yes? *waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah*. I just want someone to tell me what I need to do with confidence.
So remember that cold I had? The really bad one that I so cooly managed by calling in an order for some oral antibiotics approximately an hour into mild lung symptoms. Sure I had to overemphasize those mild symptoms a bit to achieve this.. but a few days later I knew I was the bees knees for carrying out this brilliant plan of striking before being stricken.
Recovery went something like this: horrible weird symptoms of nausea (and actual projectile vomiting) and horrible headaches for 3-4 days to the point that i called in to find out if i was overdosing. Apparently the dose was upped however for this drug.. so i was spot on. Finally my body adjusted and I started experiencing a sudden disappearance of my nighttime cough. I pee at 3-4 hour intervals at night. I seriously think this is an issue, but no one has found anything as of yet. Anyways, during these pee times I usually cough as a result of moving myself to the bathroom and i guess shaking up the stagnant mucus from the past few hours of sleep. It is basically a knee-jerk reaction that I cannot control, and at-best, I force it to stay in until I reach the bathroom in the hopes that I won't wake up Mike. After about 5 days of Septra, I was not needing to cough at all when I woke up to pee. Something I tend to notice ONLY on I.v.s these days. There was a very slight tickle, but since I was able to easily overcome it.. I did not cough and enjoyed the ease-back-into-sleep that most healthy people enjoy when they are startled awake. (as opposed to the heart-jolting, eye-bugging result of coughing your brains out.. wakes up your whole system).
ANYWAYS, so this was all going along quite nicely.. until it wasn't. I can't say the turnaround really was blatant.. but when I went to Toronto for a night stay in a hotel a week ago yesterday, I felt sub-par. I look it in the pics too. Oddly, the night-cough was still fairly gone. I did some transplant testing on the Monday and asked if I could do pfts since I was there and hadn't done pfts in a month, but was denied. 3 days later, I woke up at 6am with a stabbing pain in my left side/back which I recognized all-too-well from winter 08 and my last ever day of work. I called clinic and was told to come in immediately for an xray to rule out pneumothorax. The xray showed "no change" from the one I had done a month before for transplant testing. This left it up to symptoms. I felt relatively normal in the individual factors they tend to ask about such as 1.volume of sputum, 2.colour of sputum (i mentioned that it had been brown a few days earlier) 3. frequency of cough 4.appetite and 5.energy level. The beds were also full. So, if I had wanted to be admitted, which I never do, I would've had to sit in emergency in order to get a bed on another floor, which I have never done yet. I settled for some Cipro, as I was pretty sure what happened is that the septra killed my peaceful little s.maltophilia and i was left with my trace pseudomonas that had started a party in its absence.
This is the longest, boringest blog ever.. but I am treating it like a diary because I am so frustrated and want to keep a health record. So I apologize. i promise to put upa silly picture next blog. Ok a picture.. maybe not silly.
Here we are, 4 days after starting Cipro. Pain left after 48 hours of the drug, sputum has been difficult to move (since the pain arrived), but has progressively got lighter, and easier to move. I told the doctor on Thursday that I would come to clinic on Tuesday regardless of how I felt, because I felt it was important to follow up, and see my lung function after these weeks and weeks of dealing with Cold repurcussions.
I'm struggling with this now because I waited till this afternoon to try and book it, and know that the beds are full on the ward still.. sooooo basically if I go to clinic and get a semi-not-great number (as in... .78 versus my last clinic of .84) I won't know what to do because I feel "alright" (I think?) and I don't feel its worth goign through emergency when things are "alright"... and ending up on a different ward where I'll be scared out of my wits because I've only ever had 5 admissions and none of them were off of my regular ward. AHHH. Not to mention I MAY have an appt at the transplant hospital as soon as next week for lung function anyways. Why not just wait and then assess myself then? Maybe even then the beds will be empty if I should need one? I also still have over a week of cipro left.. I'll be "safe" in terms of holding down the infection to at least a manageable level, yes? *waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah*. I just want someone to tell me what I need to do with confidence.
No comments:
Post a Comment