Me an' my bug...

You gotta think it's not the best day you'll ever have when your doctor says "Open up and say 'AAAHH' ", and then promptly says "BLEAAAGH!" right back at ya.

I think I have my second-worst bout of strep. The worst would be the one in 2000 where I actually had to go to the hospital for fluids and IV antibios as I couldn't swallow even water. Today I can barely swallow water, so no 12 hour stint on a gurney in emerg. Doc Y didn't even do the swab test, because she said if its not strep, it's something similarly evil that warrants penicillin. So penicillin it is.

Ironically, this appointment was made was before I got this sick, and was to discuss my long-running headache. Doc Y. did look at that with all the standard in-office neurology assessments (touch your nose, touch my finger...) and concluded I don't have a tumour and haven't had a stroke. But we couldn't assess much else with raging strep throat, a 40-degrees-for-3-days fever, and EVERYthing hurting so bad I couldn't tell where the headache started and ended as opposed to the rest of me just hurting.

I did get a note to stay off work for the rest of the week. I've been, literally, in bed for most of 3 days. Pretty unusual for me, even when sick. I had this same bug about 13 months back, and though I was home from work for a couple of days, I puttered around, made soup, did a bit of laundry.

I did one load of laundry yesterday but needed a nap between washing and drying and again between taking it out of the dryer and putting it away. I HAD to do that much - I had soaked every bathrobe, wrap, pair of jammies and alot of cushions with sweat from the fever-chills cycle. Dear spousal unit, bless his heart, solved that problem with a space heater. I was trying to warm up my feet with a hair dryer this morning and realized it felt good. Sweetie saw that and when I got the hair dryer out later to warm up the bed (and play with Blue, who discovered despite the noise that things that blow hot air are nice) and went and got this little heater-fan instead and parked it beside me.

So, it works because instead of bundling up against the chills, then sweating to soak the blankie, then kicking the blankie off until I'm freezing, then bundling up in the now-cold but still wet blankie.. etc.... the warm air keeps me evaporating enough to not get anything gross and sweaty, but is warm enough that I don't need a cover or just a light one. Remember this if you ever spend 72 hours with a 40 degree fever. I'm sure I'll have cause to use it again, strep and me have a long-term repeating thing going.

Bonus fun is that Blue liked it. She would squirm and roll in front of the hot breeze. When it stopped because the thermostat thought it was warm enough, she'd roll over, sit up straight, and wait for it to go again.

In a pinch, hair dryers are nice for warming cold feet when the rest of you is hot.

Needless to say, not much packing has happened this week.