If I had my way I’d make health catching instead of disease.
~Robert Ingersoll
If you follow me on Twitter, you know that not only do I have my two weeks of officer training school coming up, but you also know that I’ve been ill off and on for a while.
A week and a half ago (on Sunday), I thought I had come down with the ‘flu, even though I had both the seasonal and H1N1 ‘flu shots. I had severe headaches, muscle/joint pain and a low-grade fever. I was really fatigued and could barely stand.
By Tuesday, I had decided I was okay enough to go to work. I was feeling much better and figured that since I’d had the shots, I had avoided the worst of it. I took the morning off to make sure I was strong enough. I was feeling much better. I got ready for work and was blow-drying my hair when I almost passed out. So I decided not to go into work that day.
I made it into work on Wednesday and have been feeling okay on and off. I’ve been exhausted and extremely fatigued the entire time, but wasn’t feeling “sick.” I even got up, went to the gym and did a 10 minute run on yesterday (Tuesday). Today, I started really feeling unbelievably exhausted.
Of course, the Navy hasn’t been making things easy with getting to my DCO school. My orders just came in this week and I can’t get DTS to work (the Defense Travel System… I have orders, but can’t get travel itinerary so far). I needed my CAC reader to continue to work on it, so I decided to take afternoon off work.
However, I went to the mall to pick up the 1st anniversary present that I picked out for Huzzy (totally cool… have to take pictures and show you later!). While driving in, I decided that I really needed to go to the doctor to see if there was anything that could be done. Surprisingly, my doctor had a 2:30 cancellation and they could get me in.
Anyway, to make a long story a bit shorter, the doctor listened to my symptoms (and they checked and I have a 99.2 degree fever and since my body temp runs a full degree lower than most, that’s like a 100.2) and voiced concerns that I might have one of a couple of viruses that are going around. Ones that mimic the ‘flu but instead can make your body stop producing blood and therefore make you anemic. And beyond that, they can also start causing liver and kidney failure.
So, yeah, he sent me on for blood tests and they should be back tomorrow morning. The whole “liver and kidney failure” thing scared the crap out of me. Now I’m questioning everything. Wait, is my pee a orange/brown color? Does that mean kidney problems? I really had more joint pain than muscle pain last week… does that mean it was this virus instead of the flu that generally produces muscle pain?
Oh, and to top it all off, I’m pretty sure a sinus infection is starting. So I’m on an antibiotic for that.
Ugh. So yeah. I’ve taken off work tomorrow. If the blood tests come back clear tomorrow, the doctor said I should start feeling better within 48 hours. He said if I feel better I can still go to DCO school on Sunday but if I wasn’t feeling better I needed to postpone it.
Problem is, my place of work pays my salary and allows me to get my Navy pay on top of it when I do Navy work. If I postpone the school until April (the next available) when I’m on unemployment, I will lose that salary that my employer pays. That’s upwards of $1000 that we’d lose. Not to mention the fact that since Huzzy will be deployed at the time, we’d have to pay for someone to watch three dogs. That would cost $300-$500. Yeah, so we’d be losing out on a lot of money if I don’t go now.
So yeah, please think good thoughts that these blood tests come back negative for kidney and liver failure. Anemia isn’t that big of a deal but the other two… scare me.
