After I was so very sick six weeks ago, I declared that I’d no longer blog about my illness. I was substantially better by the second week of May, but I’ve been coughing ever since. Well, now I’m going to blog about it again.
I took a turn for the worse on Friday afternoon. Friday night I had all the symptoms of flu — it was miserable — along with a cough that was so strong and constant that it left me exhausted. Yesterday I felt better, so I figured it was some kind of one-off weirdness. But the symptoms roared back, along with a 102° fever, so I spent a couple of hours in the ER last night. It turns out I have either bronchitis or whooping cough — it’s not clear which — but in either case azithromycin will kill it. For good measure I’m on a pair of inhalers and cough syrup with codine.
Clearly the gods are very angry with me.
Dude, are you entirely sure this is just run of the mill illness? A migrating bird flu, perhaps? A scenic tour of The Plague?
Maybe it’s time to take some tests and find out if there’s something more to this than just “the bug”.
Actually, there was a lot of talk about that at the ER. I was grilled on my recent history of foreign travel, if I’d done any spelunking recently, who I’d been in contact with who had been overseas, eaten any exotic meats, etc.
I think I have to chalk all of this up as a bad run of illness. It’ll be nice, once I go through my course of azithromycin, to feel normal again, for the first time in six weeks.
Waldo, if it is whooping cough, the azithromycin will kill the bacteria that causes it so that you will no longer be contagious, but they don’t call it the 100 day cough for nothing. You will have to live through the whole coughing phase – the antibiotics can do nothing for that. (BTW, if they think you have it, they should have tested you. The results come back in a few days and then you know for sure. If you test positive, Amber will have to take the antibiotics too – that or stay quarantined for 6 weeks.) You have been taking a lot of antibiotics lately, and that makes you a prime candidate for candida overgrowth. Do yourself a favor and go heavy on the probiotics, and light on yeasted products and sugars for awhile. Systemic candida overgrowth is quite difficult to overcome once it has become established. I hope you feel better soon!
You’ve been getting close to Republicans again.
Hey, whatever it is, I hope you feel better soon.
I wonder if blogging medical advice is worth much more than blogging legal advice?
In any case, I will limit my advice to get well soon.
The hope is that the pair of inhalers will take care of the cough-as-symptom, though they’ll do nothing for the problem itself, of course. But, yes, antibiotics do terrible things to the flora of one’s digestive tract. (I think doctors have gotten much better about informing patients of that fact.) I’ll be starting on a regimen of acidophilus tomorrow, and that should certainly help.
I agree about the issues of systemic candida overgrowth. Scary stuff. Try a bottle of “candida cleanse” from Integral Yoga or some place similar. Also, eat lots of yogurt! :)
Hope you feel better soon!
If you keep putting up posts like this, you’re never going to get better.
That doesn’t sound like much fun at all. I hope it clears up soon.
Bob- Hah! My thoughts exactly.
Feel better, Waldo.
That Bob Brink–always showing off that HE can do links even when Waldo is laid low … but I on the other hand am link-impaired.
So get well, Waldo.
Hey Waldo-
Antibiotics saved my life seven months ago. But, that said, I am pasting in an excerpt from this mornings Post.
Hope you and all your bacterial associates are well and in-balance soon.
“In fact, it’s time to stop thinking of yourself as a single living thing at all, say the scientists behind the new work. Better to see yourself as a “super-organism,” they say: a hybrid creature consisting of about 10 percent human cells and 90 percent bacterial cells.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/04/AR2006060400603.html
What a great (and timely) article. :) Thanks for that!
You know, I feel noticeably better each time I compare myself to how I felt 24 hours previous. Yesterday afternoon was better than Saturday afternoon. Yesterday evening was better than Saturday evening. This morning is better than Sunday morning. God bless antibiotics.
It might be grief, I got brochitis after Daddy died. In any case, take care of yourself.