Vent and Cough

So I'd been dealing with this apparent cold for about a week that seemed to be getting progressively worse. I couldn't breath through my nose, I had headaches, fatigue, hot flashes, and an extremely sore throat. In the end, the throat was my down fall as it got to be so bad that I was taking Tylenol and ibuprofen interchangeably every 2 hours just to take the edge off the pain which was making it basically impossible for me to swallow without extreme agony. So I finally gave in and decided to go to the convenient care Friday morning after I got off of work. Here I'm thinking I just have a really bad cold and that they will just prescribe increased fluid intake and perhaps something to dull the throat pain. They scraped my throat for strep, at my insistence, and then the nurse practitioner walked in and shined a light into my mouth. Immediately she rushed out to get a doctor who came in and they both decided that the back of my throat looked swollen enough that they were thinking I needed to go see an Ears, Nose, and Throat doc over in the clinics attached to the hospital. So I was given a shot of strong antibiotics in the butt, observed for 20 minutes, and then sent on my way across town with the initial assessment that they were thinking I had an abscess growing back where my tonsils used to be. So the ENT looks in my throat, says he thinks I either have an abscess or my tonsils grew back and are angry, and gives me 2 choices: go home with a prescription for antibiotics and hope that clears up everything, or let him numb up the back of my throat right there and lance the apparent abscess to drain it of puss in the hopes it will speed up the healing processes with the antibiotics he would then send me home with. Despite my feeling like crud and worrying over the bills that are now accumulating (even more so because I have not yet worked long enough at my new job to qualify for health insurance) I decide to let the ENT lance my throat since it's the option he preferred to take anyway. So he sprays some numbing uckiness and then injects the back of my throat with lidocaine or something 3 times and then proceeds to attempt to pop this abscess (he poked me 4 more times). And then the clicker....no puss. So the ENT is thinking the abscess must be caused by something growing deeper in my throat. So to identify the problem I'm sent for a CT scan STAT as well as lab work downstairs in the hospital. So I'm given an IV in my right hand (horrible place for a right-handed individual), told to lay in an uncomfortable position for about 15 minutes extremely still, and then poked by the vampires for blood work. JOY. Then back upstairs I went to wait for the ENT to review my results and then let me know what course of action he wants to take. An hour and a half later I'm called back to his office where he plugs in his laptop with the images from my CT scan and to my surprise it's more than either of us thought. The nasopharynx is the area of air way behind the nose and mouth connecting the two together as well as to the overall airway leading down the lungs. It is through this passageway that allows someone to squirt milk through their nose. The soft tissue of my nasopharynx, to say the least, was greatly swollen. The tissue behind my mouth was swollen to the point, in fact, that only a pencil width of airway was open. And the tissue behind my nose was completely occluded. Needless to say, the ENT looked me in the eye and said "I'm going to admit you to the hospital immediately". So after paperwork and wheelchair rides, I was finally admitted to my own room with my parents rushing over from work to be there with me. More blood was taken, (yeah, more needles) and I was immediately set up with IV infusions of antibiotics and normal saline to compensate for the fact that I had not eaten nor drank in about 24 hours by this point. So I wait and wonder. I am seen by the ENT, a general doctor, and the infectious disease team. Finally word comes back that I have been diagnosed with Epstein-Barr Mononucleosis. JOY!!!! So I'm calling my boss to let her know that she might want to inform all of my colleagues of my condition in case they come up with similar symptoms or observe these symptoms in any of our patients. And I'm having to call for a nursing aide to help me out of bed whenever I have to go to the bathroom. Also, but this point, I had not slept in about 26 hours nor had I eaten because of a complete lack of appetite. Oh, and my pain level was a constant 11 out of 10 on the traditional pain scale (they finally gave me vicodin...hehehehe). And then they hooked me up with steroids to decrease the swelling in my throat. So in the end, when I went home Sunday afternoon, I was tired, cranky, in mild pain, and able to swallow soft foods. But I was also told to not got back to work for 4 days so as to not risk infecting my patients. Well today I was checking my email, which I had not done in a couple of days because I've been sleeping and/or out of it, when I noted that Walgreens had sent me an email telling me that my prescription had been filled. Well I had no idea what prescription this was in regards to so I started making some calls. Walgreens told me that they had received a faxed prescription from the convenient care for an order of penicillin. So I called the convenient care to ask they why such an order was faxed since, 1) I had not seen anyone on the day the order was faxed, and 2) Mono is a viral infection and would not be treated by penicillin which is an antibiotic. Well they then told me that my strep swab done when I originally went into the clinic came back positive. So apparently the convenient care doctor called the doctor who oversaw my care when I was in the hospital to tell him of my positive strep infection results. It was determined that I had not received enough antibiotic treatment in the hospital to wipe out the staph infection so the clinic doctor said they would fax the order for the penicillin to the pharmacy while the hospital doc would call me to tell me of the lab results. Unfortunately the hospital doc forgot to call me. So if it had not been for that email from Walgreens, I would never have known that I was meant to go on a 10 day antibiotic treatment for the strep infection I have on top of my mono. Well at least I did finally find out...because it sure does explain a bit about why I'm still feeling crummy.

Boy what a week I've had.....and you could certainly say that when I get sick, I don't go half-assed about it.