Yuck mouth!
So, I don’t get sick very often. In fact until I had a little cold a couple of weeks ago, it had been over 2 years since I had had ANY sickness.
Yesterday morning when I woke up, my throat felt weird. Not sore, not scratchy, but more like something was caught in it or the opening had basically just narrowed, but certainly not unbearable.
I went through most of the day without any noticeable change one way or the other. I mean besides the fact that I desperately wanted to take the worlds largest Q-tip to the inside of my ears and just SCRATCH! I did also notice at one point that I was scratching the inside of my arms, but it didn’t seem to alarm me too much.
At about 10:30 last night things changed DRAMATICALLY. At that moment I seemed to realize that my throat no longer felt the weird pressure, but actually was beginning to hurt when I swallowed. And then the itching got out of control!! I couldn’t seem to stop scratching. Everywhere!! The inside of my elbows, the back of my knees, my stomach, the back of my neck, my head, etc, etc. By midnight I wanted to DIE!
Knowing that I had been exposed to strep earlier in the week, I trotted off to webmd to see if my symptoms matched that (although I knew my friend had not had the itching). Webmd told me I not only had strep throat, but that with the addition of the rash it was probably Scarlet Fever.
Okay, well, I didn’t think that sounded too great. But the website didn’t make it sound life or death, so I decided I’d hit the urgent care clinic first thing in the morning in order to begin the healing process and hopefully be better in time to salvage some part of Christmas.
During the night the itching got worse and the throat got so bad that at one point, I thought it had closed all together. I tried everything I knew to do… gargle with warm salt water, drink cool liquids, etc., but I got nowhere. I also got no sleep. I looked up the clinic hours online because I knew with the holiday, I was going to need to be there early to beat the rush. Argh, they don’t open until 10 am on Saturday?! It is now 4 am and I don’t think I can live that long!!! I decided against a trip to the ER, because who goes to the ER for strep throat?
Somehow, I did manage to get some sleep. When I woke up the next morning, the itching once again commenced at full force. My whole body looked like one bright pink speckled mess! Also, bonus was the fact that my eye lids were so swollen and filled with fluid, that it looked like I had just been Rocky’s new sparring partner!
I got to the clinic at about 20 till 10. There were other cars in the lot, too. After about 5 minutes, the people in the cars decided to get out and stand in line as everyone obviously wanted to get in and out of there as fast as possible. So I followed suit. Thank God for today’s mild weather. More people came and the line got pretty long. I was the 6th person in line and got in to a room within about 20 minutes.
My throat swab came back negative for strep. Okay, so no Scarlet Fever then. Then blood was drawn for a mono check. Nope, not that either. Okay, back to saying it is strep even though I’m negative for that. So I got a script for penicillin and told that yeah, the rash will probably stick around for a while, but you can try Benadryl… and have a Merry Christmas!
Oh, and I was also told that if the throat starts to feel worse instead of better after 24 hours, make sure I get right back to the clinic (which is actually only open until 2:00 tomorrow) or if it is later than that get to the ER as it is more than likely an abcess which will need to be drained. Great.
So clearly I’m uber-contagious right now. Fortunately my normal routine of procrastinating till the last minute didn’t happen this year, and I really didn’t have that much to get done today. A couple gift cards still to purchase were handled pretty quickly. The additional cookies I was going to make didn’t really NEED to get done as I had plenty of others. The rest of the wrapping can wait until tomorrow.
Now the question is how will I feel by tomorrow night? I’ve already called the family and given them a heads up that I will be skipping church and that the dinner and games following will be a game-time decision. Fortunately, we weren’t doing gifts until Christmas day anyway, and I’ll definitely make that. I’ll just be sitting by myself in the corner with no one coming within 5 feet of me. Merry Freaking Christmas indeed!
In TOTALLY unrelated news… I joined eharmony. That’s right the search is on for love! I have fought doing this for a long time and I am still not real comfortable with it, but I decided it is time to put the fear aside and dive in head first… what do I have to lose? $60 and 30 days of wasted time, possibly.
So if you are interested in playing along at home…
Day 3 and I am up to 30 total match opportunities
5 of those “requested communication”
4 of them I responded to
1 responded back
I am now at the “Open Communication” phase with the only one who bothered to continue the process with me and I guess the ball is in my court to send him a message. Up until now, the communication was all multiple choice questions lobbed back and forth. Now that it is time to get more specific, I’m blanking on what to ask him. Any and all advice is appreciated!
Merry whatever-you-are-celebrating to my F-list! I hope santa (or whoever) knows how good you all truly are and brings you everything on your lists!
Sterile (((HUGS))) to you all!
Yesterday morning when I woke up, my throat felt weird. Not sore, not scratchy, but more like something was caught in it or the opening had basically just narrowed, but certainly not unbearable.
I went through most of the day without any noticeable change one way or the other. I mean besides the fact that I desperately wanted to take the worlds largest Q-tip to the inside of my ears and just SCRATCH! I did also notice at one point that I was scratching the inside of my arms, but it didn’t seem to alarm me too much.
At about 10:30 last night things changed DRAMATICALLY. At that moment I seemed to realize that my throat no longer felt the weird pressure, but actually was beginning to hurt when I swallowed. And then the itching got out of control!! I couldn’t seem to stop scratching. Everywhere!! The inside of my elbows, the back of my knees, my stomach, the back of my neck, my head, etc, etc. By midnight I wanted to DIE!
Knowing that I had been exposed to strep earlier in the week, I trotted off to webmd to see if my symptoms matched that (although I knew my friend had not had the itching). Webmd told me I not only had strep throat, but that with the addition of the rash it was probably Scarlet Fever.
Okay, well, I didn’t think that sounded too great. But the website didn’t make it sound life or death, so I decided I’d hit the urgent care clinic first thing in the morning in order to begin the healing process and hopefully be better in time to salvage some part of Christmas.
During the night the itching got worse and the throat got so bad that at one point, I thought it had closed all together. I tried everything I knew to do… gargle with warm salt water, drink cool liquids, etc., but I got nowhere. I also got no sleep. I looked up the clinic hours online because I knew with the holiday, I was going to need to be there early to beat the rush. Argh, they don’t open until 10 am on Saturday?! It is now 4 am and I don’t think I can live that long!!! I decided against a trip to the ER, because who goes to the ER for strep throat?
Somehow, I did manage to get some sleep. When I woke up the next morning, the itching once again commenced at full force. My whole body looked like one bright pink speckled mess! Also, bonus was the fact that my eye lids were so swollen and filled with fluid, that it looked like I had just been Rocky’s new sparring partner!
I got to the clinic at about 20 till 10. There were other cars in the lot, too. After about 5 minutes, the people in the cars decided to get out and stand in line as everyone obviously wanted to get in and out of there as fast as possible. So I followed suit. Thank God for today’s mild weather. More people came and the line got pretty long. I was the 6th person in line and got in to a room within about 20 minutes.
My throat swab came back negative for strep. Okay, so no Scarlet Fever then. Then blood was drawn for a mono check. Nope, not that either. Okay, back to saying it is strep even though I’m negative for that. So I got a script for penicillin and told that yeah, the rash will probably stick around for a while, but you can try Benadryl… and have a Merry Christmas!
Oh, and I was also told that if the throat starts to feel worse instead of better after 24 hours, make sure I get right back to the clinic (which is actually only open until 2:00 tomorrow) or if it is later than that get to the ER as it is more than likely an abcess which will need to be drained. Great.
So clearly I’m uber-contagious right now. Fortunately my normal routine of procrastinating till the last minute didn’t happen this year, and I really didn’t have that much to get done today. A couple gift cards still to purchase were handled pretty quickly. The additional cookies I was going to make didn’t really NEED to get done as I had plenty of others. The rest of the wrapping can wait until tomorrow.
Now the question is how will I feel by tomorrow night? I’ve already called the family and given them a heads up that I will be skipping church and that the dinner and games following will be a game-time decision. Fortunately, we weren’t doing gifts until Christmas day anyway, and I’ll definitely make that. I’ll just be sitting by myself in the corner with no one coming within 5 feet of me. Merry Freaking Christmas indeed!
In TOTALLY unrelated news… I joined eharmony. That’s right the search is on for love! I have fought doing this for a long time and I am still not real comfortable with it, but I decided it is time to put the fear aside and dive in head first… what do I have to lose? $60 and 30 days of wasted time, possibly.
So if you are interested in playing along at home…
Day 3 and I am up to 30 total match opportunities
5 of those “requested communication”
4 of them I responded to
1 responded back
I am now at the “Open Communication” phase with the only one who bothered to continue the process with me and I guess the ball is in my court to send him a message. Up until now, the communication was all multiple choice questions lobbed back and forth. Now that it is time to get more specific, I’m blanking on what to ask him. Any and all advice is appreciated!
Merry whatever-you-are-celebrating to my F-list! I hope santa (or whoever) knows how good you all truly are and brings you everything on your lists!
Sterile (((HUGS))) to you all!