My life... in detail.

I've been pretty absent from the blogosphere! I just wasn't in a mental place to blog! And it wasn't depression, it was just life is crazy lately. Like, for instance, I was pretty much sick for the entire month of April! So I had no more gotten over the yeast infection when I got cellulitis (read: skin infection) on my nose! Totally random. So here I thought I had some kind of staph infection... and maybe not? It seems like a lot of cases of cellulitis are caused by staph, and a lot of cases are also caused by strep.

So I went to urgent care like the last day of March, seeing as my nose was red and puffy and swollen. The doctor gave me Cipro for the infection, but also said "Oh by the way, you have a throat infection." Did he give me anything to help clear that up? Nope. The cipro only managed to hold the throat infection off while it cleared up my nose. A week later, my throat was looking red and infected, and yet, my throat never hurt, not even once!

I called my personal doctor who called me out amoxicillin. I took it for a week, my throat looked 95% better, and I thought I could move on with my life. By the way, this puts us at the middle/end of April now. After about four days off the amoxicillin, I notice my throat looks slightly not right, and it seems like my glands are swelling up again. At this point, I go into to see my doctor (not even sure if I have insurance coverage at this point), because I wanted him to actually see my throat for once. At his office he went on to look at me for all of 30 seconds, then he told me I was fine and basically just paranoid. It probably didn't help the fact that I also asked for a refill of my Xanax prescription.

Now, that was a Thursday... maybe the last Thursday in April, but I've lost track at this point. So speed ahead to the next Tuesday. For some reason I decided to take the day off of work, because I seemed extra tired and there were no good job offers. There I was relaxing, watching tv and enjoying my lunch, when I noticed that I seemed to have a bit of a chill. I saw goosebumps on my arms and thought it was weird. For some reason I decided to go ahead and take my temperature, and I found that I was running a fever. It's not like me to run a fever for a cold, so I was a little concerned. It was only like 99.5, but still, it wasn't like me. I looked at my throat, which looked a little red, and thought that maybe I was getting the flu.

The next day came and I had to cancel a job a teacher had requested me for ages ago. I still wasn't shaking the fever, and now it seemed worse, creeping up to 100. And my throat was scratchy. Still no white spots like before, so I dismissed it. Besides, hadn't the doctor told me less than a week ago that I was fine? If I called him again he'd think I was nutty. It was probably a late season flu, and I'd be fine. Except that night I checked my throat once more and there were definitely a few small white spots on my tonsils.

Thursday came and I felt super awful. My fever was now going up to 101, and my throat was starting to get sore. I was so achy all I could do was lie in bed, waiting for the tylenol or ibuprofen to kick in. By the late afternoon I had a lot of white spots on my tonsils, and I finally believed the little voice that was telling me that this wasn't the flu. It was too late to call my doc, so I had to just tough it out for the night. My fever started creeping up to 102, and the only way I could keep my temperature below 101 (but never below 100) was to take tylenol, and then two hours later take ibuprofen, and I did that through the night.

Finally Friday morning, I called the doc. He only stays til noon on Fridays, but luckily the receptionist was willing to squeeze me in at the very last appointment of the day. It took every bit of will power (and a ton of ibuprofen) to convince myself to take a shower and get dressed, but somehow I managed. I waited and waited, and sat in the waiting room for over an hour, before I finally got called back. After I got called back I waited for almost another half hour before the doctor came in! The nurse who saw me has known me since I was a baby, so as soon as she walked in the door, she said "Tammy... sweetie, you're sick! I can see it on your face! The throat, again?" I just nodded in agony... at this point my throat was so swollen it was hard for anyone to understand me when I spoke.

So the doc comes in, and at that point I was lying on the exam table because all of my energy was drained. Even with ibuprofen I was still running a fever. Before he examined me he said "So... you're back? You told me on Thursday that you felt fine!" In which I snapped at him, as best I could seeing as my throat was swollen, and said "No... you said I was fine, I told you I didn't quite feel right."

And I have to say, I loved that he simply ignored this statement of mine. He went on to examine me and immediately told me I had a "very bad case of strep." I asked him for a throat culture, but he said it was so "definitively strep" he could take pictures of my throat for a text book case study. Oh ha, ha, ha. So he gave me a ridiculously high dose of penicillin for seven days and sent me on my merry way.

Only... it took days for me to feel better. My fever didn't finally break until Sunday, and I was still running a fever off and on all through Monday. So that put me at a solid, miserable week of having a fever, and many days of having a throat that hurt so bad I literally had to talk myself into swallowing. The only thing I could stand to eat were popsicles, and I was eating them nonstop.

I called my doc on Monday because my tonsils looked disgusting! Like seriously, they looked 20x worse than when I first saw him. My right tonsil was so covered in white that it looked like I had taken a drink of white out. No joke, it was horrible. My doc had told me to call him on Monday if I wasn't better, but yet, when I called, his instructions were to just keep taking my penicillin. Friday came, and I still have a spot on my tonsil, so guess what? The doctor called me out another week's worth of pencillin.

I feel fine now... thankfully, and I literally just stopped taking penicillin on Friday. So from the end of March until last Friday, I had went through 4 weeks worth of antibiotics, all for strep!!! It was totally crazy... and I seriously thought my body was trying to kill me.

So you can see why over the last month or so I haven't been in the mood to blog much. More has went on in my life in the last week or so, such as I had my Leep procedure and I did May Weekend at camp, but this blog is long enough, so I'll save that for a blog in a few days.

I just thought you guys would like to know that I am indeed, alive and well. :)