Finally, the 2nd part of my fascinating health story...

When I wrote the first part of my fascinating health story I left you hanging with me in the ER of Huntington Beach hospital.....

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful....

The day after my ambulance ride I had my mom take me to the doctor. My mom took me to see the doctor and at first I was irked because when I don't get to see the doctor of my choice I always feel like I'm forced to see the doctor who has the most time on their hands, and of course they have time on their hands because they are probably a crappy doctor and no one wants to book an appointment with them. However..I was so sick at this point that I didn't care if my appointment was with Dr. Bombay. (for you youngsters..."Dr. Bombay" was Samantha's witch doctor on the original "Bewitched" series.)


I was very relieved to find that this doctor spoke English very well and he actually had a sense of humor. He asked me a million questions and ordered further blood tests and asked me to get my lab results from the emergency room and come back to see him in a couple of days if I didn't feel any better. My mom and I went to the hospital and easily got my lab reports. I really figured that it was going to be a monumental hassle as is anything to do with hospital paper work but this time my mom walked in there and 25 minutes later came out with my lab sheets.

My mom took me to her house so that she could take care of me. It was a huge relief to not have to go back home and attempt to take care of myself. When I am by myself and I'm sick I will not eat. I don't eat if I'm not hungry and I don't drink if I'm not thirsty and if I don't feel good that usually trumps everything so I don't eat or drink, which is how I wound up in the situation at Albertson's. My mom is the kind of nurse who will cook or purchase anything in the world that you might want to consume and usually just the idea that she went out of her way is enough to inspire me to eat something.

I thought that being back in my childhood home would make me feel better but unfortunately I had seen nothing yet. As soon as night fell my fever went up and up and up. I was taking 800 Motrin piggy backed with 2 extra strength Tylenol. That helped a little but there was some times when it didn't touch the fever. My mom called the doctor to see if we could up the milligrams of meds but he said no. Instead he wanted my mom to take all of the covers off of me, take my pjs off and wash me down with luke warm water and put a fan directly one me. If I had one ounce of strength I would have gotten up and ran out of the house. The absence of blankets was bad enough but when the fan got pointed on me that was torture. I did my best to deal with it and fortunately it worked like a charm.

We went back to see the doctor with my ER lab reports and the doctor couldn't believe his eyes. My heart rate was way too high and my sugar rate was way too high. He asked me if I had a history of diabetes a couple of different times. I guess he just couldn't believe me when I told him that I didn't have diabetes. I told him that other than the high fevers my biggest complaint was a serious pain in my back. So I left that appointment with a referral to have an ultra sound scan of my kidneys, a referral for a Holter Monitor and a lab slip for more blood work.

Luckily the Holter monitor didn't reveal any heart problems and my blood sugar report came back within the normal range. (Later I was told that the heart rate was probably due to the fact that I was scared from the episode in the grocery store and the sugar was probably high because they took my blood after hooking me up to my IV which was pumping sugar in to my veins.) (As I write this I still haven't heard anything about my kidney scan and it's been 4 months!)


My fever continued to rise and fall and I slept and slept and slept. When the fever rose so did the pain in my back. If I didn't have a gall bladder I would have sworn that I was having a gall bladder attack. At one point the fever was so high it made me throw up.


Test after test the doctor still couldn't find what was causing the fever. Fever is a sign of infection yet nothing appeared to be infected. The doctor asked me a million more questions none of which led him to any reason for my fevers. I told him that I had had mono as a teenager and wondered if I had it again. He looked at me and laughed and flat out told me, "You don't have mono." Ok, fine. I don't have mono. He gave me a prescription for Levaquin and some big whopping shot of some other antibiotic and told me to come back in a few days.


By the 5th time I had seen this doctor he was ready to test me for everything under the sun. I brought up the possibility of mono again. He asked me if I worked with children or teenagers and I told him that I didn't. I told him that back in 1999 my ex-husband had been diagnosed with hepatitis C after we had split up. I told him that I had been tested for that and for every STD known to man kind and all of the tests were negative at the time. So, he sent me to the lab again and had me tested for hepatitis and just for "shits and gigs" he also had me tested for the Epstein Barr virus. EB causes mono.


I was very happy to find that I didn't have any of the hepatitis's and I was not really surprised to find out that I had a whopping case of mono. Once you have it it remains in your system but 99% of the time it will be dormant. There is really no rhyme or reason why my mono reared it's ugly head but the doc told me that the "titers" on a mono test usually show up as .01 and mine were 5.0. He kept looking at the results and shaking his head. He couldn't believe someone of my age and demographic had mono. He wrote me a note for the month of February off of work and sent me home. No one loves a vacation more than me but the idea of being at home sick for a month didn't excite me. However it didn't take me long to realize that I was free to sleep for as much as I wanted and let me tell you....sleep I did. I slept 17 hours at a stretch. My mom made me eat and drink when ever I woke up and it was usually a fever that made me wake up.


IMOM came to visit me, which I thought was very brave of him. He brought me a bouquet of roses and 2 bottles of Perrier. I'm happy to report that even after seeing me with sick-bed head and wearing flannel pajamas that were two sizes too small...he still says he loves me.


When I went back to my own house Lorenzo still woke me up at 6:00 am and at 6:00 pm. That is when he eats and he had no sympathy for my plight. All of the kitties were happy to have me home and they were usually piled up on me as I slept.


During the last week of February I tried to get up and move around in order create energy so that I would be able to go back to work. It was really hard to drag myself off of the couch but I was happy about getting to go back to work. I like having a reason to get up in the morning and I had had enough of sitting around watching day time tv and playing with the cats.

When I went back to work it was no fun to get up in the morning but once I got started I usually felt pretty good.

It is now June 30th and I have had some peaks and valleys. The peaks are simply weeks when I am able to come home from work and do something before going to bed at 10:00 pm. The valleys are days like yesterday when I get home from work, feed the cats and go to bed at 6:00 pm and still don't want to get up when the Lorenzo T2000 wakes me up. I've seen my official primary care doc and she says that all of my blood work looks good. She ordered a scan of my liver and a mammogram. The mammogram results were "within normal range" and that is enough to make this cancer survivor want to dance. I need to call in to get my liver results and hopefully they will still have the results from my kidney scan from February.

I'm supposed to go to Europe in August. Hope I can stay awake.