I don’t often get sick. Sure, maybe an occasional cough or runny nose, but nothing I can’t handle myself at home with a little rest and home remedy.
Boy, was I in for a surprise!
My kids had been ill for a couple days, a simple 48-hour sore-throat/sleepy/mild fever thing that they quickly got over and went on with their happy little lives, so when I started getting that tell-tale ache in my throat, I guessed that I was in for the same deal. No big. 48 hours isn’t bad.
Now, I am an adult. I have responsibilities that I can’t just turn away from, no matter how yucky I feel. My kids got to stay in their pj’s and nap on the couch. I had to feed and care for those same healthy kids when my illness struck, not to mention needing to head out into the cold frequently to check on my sheep, since our lambing season was just beginning. So when the third day dawned and I was still experiencing symptoms, I chalked it up to not allowing myself as much rest as the kids had been able to have.
Then day four, Saturday, rolled around. I was getting pretty uncomfortable by this time, my food and water intake was starting to drop because it was so painful to swallow. I did my best with chicken boullion and lemon water to at least not get too dehydrated. But it was the weekend, so there would be no local doctors available in clinic, so I’d have to head off to a city (at least 1.5 hour drive!) to find a walk-in clinic, or else head to an emergency department at a small-town hospital, which I always hate doing, because those folks have more important things to be available for than my silly sore throat. So I resolved, if I wasn’t feeling better by Monday, I’d make a trip to the city for a walk-in clinic.
Then came Sunday morning.
I didn’t get a picture of my own throat. And I couldn’t find a comparable photo online that I could use to show you. But imagine that a little infection fairy had come along during the night and made a golf-ball sized blob of inflammation and just gently inserted it under the skin of the roof of your mouth, near the back and off to one side, where it’s squishy right before it disappears down your throat. They ahd also packed a bunch of it into the tonsil, and into the tissue at the back of the throat too, and up into the nose, and out toward the ears…. You get the idea.
That is what I woke up to.
I had to concentrate very hard not to allow my swollen soft palate to trigger my gag reflex, as it was starting to tickle my tongue. I could not longer close my jaw correctly, the swelling had gotten so bad. And swallowing anything, even just saliva, had become a process that required me to take several deep breaths and psyche myself up for the pain. I was getting dehydrated enough at that point that I didn’t have much spit left anyways.
I told my husband, in my weird squashy sore-throat voice, that we were skipping church and I needed to go to an ER. And not just the small-town variety. I was beginning to fear for my ability to continue breathing in the near future.
We headed off. 83 minutes later I checked in at the Emergency department and they sent me through triage. About an hour later I was able to see a doctor. Two traumas had come in not long after my arrival so I was pretty impressed that my wait was that short. She ordered an IV to get me started on antibiotics and just some fluids in general, bloodwork to rule out a bunch of things, and a CT scan to determine if I had an abcess inside my tonsil. This all happened throughout the course of the morning and into the early afternoon.
Threading the IV was an exciting adventure. I have very narrow, deeply buried veins in my hands on a well-hydrated healthy day. Now I was very dehydrated. The nurse managed to get one to pop on the side of my wrist, thankfully, and I started getting that saline and meds I needed.
CT scan came back negative for abcess, just indicated crazy bad inflammation. Bloodwork came back negative for mono. At 4 PM the doctor said I was diagnosed with peritonsillar cellulitis and would be admitted so they could continue IV antibiotics, because I was so swollen that telling me to go home and take pills would be a jerk move. I was also put on Dexamethasone, which is a steroid, to help reduce the swelling more rapidly.
Here’s my fancy medicine apparatus! Like a mobile above my big-person crib, haha.
I spent two nights in the hospital. The first one, I slept like a rock, I was so tired and in pain.
They had to change my IV site the second day, as my original line was no longer working properly, it was making shooting pains up my arm with each chug of the IV pump. I was a little better hydrated at this point, so they got one tiny little vein to pop in my other hand. I was starting to feel a lot better, and was able to eat actual food again, as both the swelling and pain had gone down a lot after a night’s rest and lots of meds.
Look at all the meds! Bags and bags and bags of it! And this picture was taken after just a few hours. Pretty sure we went through three garbage cans full by the time I went home.
The second night I stayed up really late, working on my Write Club short story (which was due the next day!), and even when I was done and tried to sleep, I had a hard time because all the hospital noises kept me awake.
So when the doctor came and checked me over the next morning, and said I could go home that day, I was very excited that I’d be reunited with my own comfy bed.
In true farmer fashion, I stopped at the barn first on our way home, and helped deliver a stuck lamb before I actually entered my house. Can’t take the country out of me, I guess!
I’ve been home now for nine days, and I’m feeling basically back to normal. I still have one more day of oral antibiotics to take, which are still irritating my digestives system a bit, so I suppose I’ll finally be “normal” again when my gut bacteria get re-populated.
I want to say a special thanks to all my friends at from the various Discord servers I’m part of, who chatted with me while I was languishing. I’m pretty sure the nurses thought they’d mixed up my drugs a little, some of the laughing that was coming from my room! Laughter really is the best medicine.
Thanks for coming to read about my terrible, but easily overcome, illness. I’m sure it pales in comparison to folks who are struggling with chronic illnesses that require frequent hospitalizations. But it was a big deal for me at the time, and folks have been asking, so I thought I’d lay it all out for you here. Stay healthy if you can, everyone!
all photos taken by me, with my Samsung Galaxy S5 Neo