Hospital Living: Part 1

I know I'm not going to have time to write this all in one blog post. Not going to happen. So I'll start when everything began: Tuesday.

I woke up in the morning very cold. Shivering, hypothermia type of cold. Tooth-clattering, hands-shaking, painful cold. And I was a little dizzy.

Thinking about getting warm as fast as possible, I figured a nice hot shower was my best option. Showering is tough when you're violently shaking, but I made it through somehow. Just out of curiosity, I checked the thermostat to see if the heat had gotten turned off overnight. It hadn't, and it was the same temp it always was in the house.

The next thing I thought of was that I must have a fever. 98.3. Not high. Higher than average for me (I usually run a cool 97.7), but not a fever. I went to work.

I was still dizzy. Halfway down the street I thought I should turn around. I was a little nauseated because I had taken my vitamin on an empty stomach that morning. But I thought that would pass and everything would be fine once I got to work.

All was not well. If anything, I felt worse when I got to work. I sent out a plea for someone to come pick me up and take me home so that I didn't have to bus home and do all that walking - I was still really dizzy.

Turns out it was a good thing I went home. My stop-mom picked me up and dropped me off at home on her way to work. It means so much to me that she did that for me. So much. When I took my temp again, it was over 102. One giant nap later, 103.3.

I take some ibuprofen for the fever and commence freaking out. It was somewhere around here that I was starting to realize how much my leg was starting to hurt. The back and side felt like they were burning, and they were red and hot to the touch.

So I did what any thirty-something would do in this day and age: the Almighty Google.

Pain, redness, hot to the touch? All symptoms of a blood clot. Deep vein thrombosis. As in: can kill you if you don't take care of it fast.

The freak-out is instantly amped up. I made a post on Facebook, seeing if someone could take me to urgent care.

A friend jumped to the rescue. She and I were friends way back in elementary school but had gradually drifted apart over the years (as happens to most friendships from elementary school). She took me to the clinic I wanted to go to (the same clinic where I see my primary care doc). There was no wait at urgent care (note: this never happens).

The doc there identifies the problem in my leg almost immediately. He's 98% sure once I tell him about my fever.

Cellulitis.

No, it is not anything related to cellulite.

Cellulitis is a bacterial infection of the subcutaneous tissue or other deep tissue of the body, most commonly happening in the legs, hands, and face.

But, he wasn't 100% sure there wasn't a clot, so he scheduled an ultrasound on my leg to check for clots later that evening.

My step-mom to the rescue again! She took me to the hospital (because that's where you get ultrasounds).

Ok, changing to a faster method here. I'm starting to fall asleep thanks to the drugs.

The ultrasound was negative, so I started taking antibiotics for the cellulitis.

It didn't help. In fact, it started getting worse. A lot worse. By Thursday, I still had a temp over 100, the redness and swelling had spread to the entire lower leg. The pain was unbearable.

Call to the doctor's office and they told me I should come in to see my primary care doc. I did, and he said that the best option, since the infection had obviously gotten worse after 24 hours of antibiotics, was to be admitted to the hospital for a few days and receive IV antibiotics.

The hospital. Admitted. Inpatient. IV.

Yes, this is happening. And I couldn't even go home to get stuff. They made me go straight there to start treatment right away.

And that's where I have to stop for the night. It's bedtime for this sicko.