Friday 7/23/2011

I haven't really been feeling that well this week, but I did nothing about it until....yesterday.
By the time I got off of work yesterday, I felt like death on feet. Without getting too graphic, it's usually described as a burning when urinating. But, my whole body felt like I had the flu from hades.

Anyway, I headed straight to urgent care. I am not fooling around with junk like this. They took a urine sample, came back 20 minutes later and told me that I had extremely elevated amounts of proteins and white and red blood cells in it. That all sounds wonderful, what, exactly, does that mean? What it means, the lady told me, is that you have an extremely severe infection. Men usually don't get urinary tract infections, I was further informed, it's likely your prostrate, which takes longer to heal.

Further, she explained, the symptoms you are feeling likely mean that the infection is going "systemic" - apparently meaning spreading throughout my entire body. Lovely day. I was given a prescription for Levaquin and was told they were going to give me an antibiotic injection. She left and came back in a while, informing me they couldn't do the injection because of my Penicillin allergy. You know, that doctor that told me I was allergic to Penicillin some 39 years ago really got my attention, even at the age of 8 years old. He wanted me to be extremly, absolutely clear on the fact that if I ever had another Penicillin shot or pills or whatever again, it would likely take my life.

You go around in life wearing that badge of junk and every time you go into a doctor's office, the first thing you tell them: I am allergic to Penicillin. I can tell you the first and only time I had a shot of it, I had huge hives all over my body, I was sick - really sick - for almost 2 weeks and life wasn't so great. Undoubtedly, it is a limiting factor of how doctors can treat me, but I'll take a sickness that feels like a hammer is being bounced on my head rather than death any day.

Of course, I read the potential side effects of this medicine - not until a few minutes ago. Yikes. I am not even going to go into any of it, it isn't worth it. I already took the stuff and that's that. What was I going to do, die? I had a fever that was just short of 103. It went up almost 3 degrees from the time I had left the doc's office til' a few hours after I got home. But I get really nervous taking medications - any of it. You continually read in the news about a drug that people have been taking and then find out it is killing them or causing birth defects to their babies or this, that and the other thing. Which is why I don't even like to take Tylenol. I never did much of that stuff anyway, and then, a study comes out about the side effects of taking too much of that stuff as well.

I had never known, though, besides the potential for an allergic reaction, obviously, that antibiotics could have such potential, serious side effects. Add the fact that they gave me the highest dosage of this stuff that is available. Add to that the pharmacist's reaction to the prescription: "Oh, wow, that is a high dosage!" I obviously had to ask what she was talking about. She said that this is a powerful antibiotic. It comes in 250, 500 and 750 milligrams. You are getting the highest dosage available.

Last night, my head was pounding. Hard to describe the feeling. My whole body was aching. I was not liking life, I can tell you that. I haven't felt that bad in years.

I found a description of prostrate infection symptoms: The symptoms of prostate infection can also differ according to its causes. For acute bacterial prostatitis the symptoms include increase in the frequency of urine; great urgency to urinate; pain while urinating; pain in the genital area; difficulty in producing a normal stream while urinating. There can also be some general signs for prostrate infection like fatigue, high chills and high fever.

Unbelievably, I have ALL of those symptoms. Last night, I had was going from feeling extremely hot to having cold chills.

Umm, the only thing I can say today? The pounding in my head is gone, I don't have extreme flu like symptoms anymore and I feel much better. I did not go to work today. I called my manager yesterday around 6:00 pm and toldhim I would definitely not be coming in. So, I am doing nothing today. I am still feeling really tired and I intend on sleeping much of today.

As for the heat wave, I saw New York with some statement that it had hit 112 degrees. I can only imagine what kind of swampish hell feeling that must be with the humidity there. Today's high there is 100 - but the "real feel is 111. Yowsa. Hope you have central AC over there, I know in the ghetto area of Pittsburgh I grew up in, those hold houses didn't have central AC and didn't even have the duct work for it. You can't really sit in a house in a situation that feels like 111 degrees. If it were me, I would at the very least buy a window AC unit and keep at least one room of the house cool - but that's me. Not everyone has the money to go out and buy window AC units or pay for the increased electric bill. Fin, if you are over there right now (versus down south), I just read that today, the real feel in that city is 107.

The high here today is only going to be 105. Humidity levels have been up around these parts, though. I think the other day it was 36%. That doesn't sound like much to you folks that live in 90% plus humidity, but couple that with an afternoon high of 109 and then we have a situation.

I'm done, for now.

ben