Flutterby™! : Under the weather 2006-09-19 16:30:23.114742+00

Under the weather

2006-09-19 16:30:23.114742+00 by Dan Lyke 9 comments

The under the weatherness continues. Yesterday and last night were constant diarrhea and gas bloating, headaches, and because I've been trying to sleep (actually just staring at the insides of my eyelids, except for maybe 3 hours last night), the rest of my body aches.

The nurse at my doctor's office said "symptoms sound like a virus, not an infection, so as long as you stay hydrated there's not much we can do". Which is roughly what I expected to hear. So sucking down water and various electrolytes, checking my weight on the scale regularly, and trying to stay sane.

This sucks.

Dan, diarrhea?? And you haven't mentioned to anyone at the doctor's office that you ate spinach this past weekend?

I actually didn't, Charlene did. And the symptoms came on beforehand, and the worse symptoms (Sunday night) were too early to be a reaction to anything I would have had at "Taste of Marin". Although I did have a packaged salad mix on Friday evening.

But the nurse told me that to be consistent with the symptoms of infection by that E. coli strain I'd have to have streams, not just spotting, of blood in my stool. And I have no blood in my stool.

Ugh. I hope you're feeling better. Sounds like a very unpleasant tummy bug ya got there.

Found the right drug combo to somewhat alleviate some of the symptoms, but I'm calling for a doctor's visit sometime today. I dunno, maybe they can try to culture something out of my blood, maybe there's some other symptom I'm missing that I haven't described over the phone, but this still sucks.

I'm off solid foods for now (1800 calories a day of liquids, especially when I'm trying to be sensible about the sorts of sugars I consume, is gonna be interesting. I'm thinking lots of miso broth and ginger tea sweetened with malt syrup.), got a prescription for Vicodin

in the hopes that that'll work to alleviate the pain and let me sleep, and left a bunch of shi... I mean, some stool samples and blood for the lab.

#Comment Re: made: 2006-09-21 14:36:07.313426+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]

I didn't mention that yesterday at my appointment my temperature came out a normal 98.6°F. I was a little surprised, 'cause the night before I'd measured it in the low 102s, and had changed the sheets once and slept on a towel with a towel under me and tossed them immediately in the wash 'cause of the sweating.

But yesterday evening I measured myself again and it came up 98.5°F. Normally I run a little cooler, but it seems like the fever is broken. Hallelujah!

And Vicodin

worked wonderfully last night, slowed down everything so that despite a fairly constant stream (sorry) of bathroom trips prior to taking it (ie: 15-30 minutes between trips), they ... err... trickled off and I got a straight stretch of at least 6 hours uninterrupted.

Still got the runs, and the stomach cramps, but the headaches appear to be gone and I've slept!

And, word to the wise: As good as a little hot sauce in that V8 (which we always seem to have in the back of a cupboard, probably 'cause it's good disaster/desert camping food) may taste going down, when everything's blasting fully through the digestive system in short times and your butt's already in need of layers of lanolin... Yeah, we're going with bland today.