Not Alone in Sickness.

November 6, 2007

Quite a lot of medical melodrama has gone down in the past few weeks. As expected, I’ve contributed to the drama with some sickness of my own but, for once, my extended family is out-doing me with their illnesses. Which isn’t a good thing for any of us.

Almost two weeks ago, I had an emergency doctor appointment with my Internal Medicine doc and it did not go well. At all. After I explained all of my symptoms–none of which were new to me and was stuff that I’ve been dealing with since I was 12, he jumped on the “It’s HERPES” train.

Then he took off to go grab swab kits and I freaked out in the little exam room. Now, being a budding epidemiologist and virologist, I know that there are many, many different strains of herpes. Herpes causes chicken pox among other non-STD problems. My brother had shingles a few years ago and that’s also herpes. In fact, my Internal Medicine doc meant the shingles form of herpes (Herpes Zoster).

But no one likes to hear that they might have herpes. Especially when your doc is pretty adamant that your strange rash is herpes and is only testing it just to confirm the diagnosis. So, as I’m freaking out over the “I’ve been monogamous with my husband for five years how do I tell him HERPES?” thing, the nurse is shooting my ass full of antibiotics, which I hate. I haven’t gotten that shot in ages and it still hurts like a mother-frakker. The doc comes back in and shoves a fistful of prescriptions at me, including Valtrex, which is used to treat shingles but shingles is NOT the first thing you think of when you hear “Valtrex.” At least, it wasn’t the first thing I thought of when he handed the prescription to me. I thought of the ubiquitous TV ads with gorgeous young people talking about how Valtrex took care of their herpes and now they can stop feeling ashamed of their herpes outbreaks. With the disclaimer that they still have to wear condoms. Love the disclaimer. I also got some antibiotics (since it could have been an infection) and that meant that I’ve hit my limit for antibiotics this year.

Skip The Aside

(Aside: Newsweek finally published an article telling the world everything I’ve been telling it FOR YEARS. The world simply does not listen to me. Our over-sterilized environments, combined with our over-prescription of anti-virals and antibiotics, has created not only many different strains of Super Bugs–the drug-resistant TB and the staph infection that is known as the Flesh Eating Bacteria that is now eating it’s way through the East Coast are only two recent examples–but has raised the occurrence of autoimmune diseases like asthma, and Crohn’s. Seriously, people, this is something I’ve known about for over a decade and the problem is getting worse. When I started reading about the strain of staph (mainly known for the common ailment of “strep throat”) that had been dubbed the Flesh Eating Bacteria, it was a decade ago. People kept trying to ask me why I was more into Ebola than the Flesh Eating Bacteria and I foolishly believed that no one would be stupid enough to allow Flesh Eating Bacteria to reach outbreak levels. I was wrong. Check out the search results for “staph” in Yahoo! News: it’s definitely a problem. Now they have a “screening” test for it which… DUH. You can screen for anything, ya morons. PLUS they are saying that this not-new staph superbug could kill more Americans than AIDS and that really pisses me off. The only reason AIDS killed so many Americans is because Reagan refused to acknowledge it as more than GRID–Gay Related Immune Deficiency–and early AIDS docs had to steal funding for it from other health programs since Reagan refused to fund research for it. Apparently, we did not learn our lesson from that monumental mistake because the same damn thing is happening with Flesh Eating Bacteria. And just in case anyone is wondering why I’m calling it Flesh Eating Bacteria when the press is using the more appropriate medical term of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It’s because I have been reading about this particular strain of staph for years. In high school, I would have my Ebola pictures in my binder and one of the Flesh Eating Bacteria. Because I’m utterly bizarre. In any case, I’ve got more documentation for the curious: Group A Streptococcal Infection on Wikipedia and the Group A Streptococcal Infection Fact Sheet from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a branch of the National Institutes of Health. I am nothing if not thorough in my research.)

I don’t blame you for skipping it. It was a really long aside.

Enough about me and my obsessions. My Mother-in-Law is having surgery next week to repair a torn rotator cuff (although no one, including her, has any idea how she tore her rotator cuff) and will have her left arm in a sling for quite a few weeks. The surgery is simple and fairly easy but she’s already complaining about having to wear it in a sling, and I don’t blame her because I would be complaining if it were me. I’ve promised to help prepare Thanksgiving for her, since she’ll be unable to do most everything. Devin’s thrilled that I’m going to learn how to cook a proper Thanksgiving meal. I’m rather dreading it.

One of Devin’s uncles is having a quintuple by-pass today. We’re not sure if he had a heart attack, or aneurism, but he certainly suffered from a very serious heart problem. Most of the family has gone up to San Ramon to be there for the surgery. Devin and I stayed home because I know from experience that our presence would only annoy and frustrate hospital personnel. Only very close family members are allowed in the private waiting rooms, which is where they would be for such a serious surgery.

Since my Dad has had three heart attacks, and two by-passes (the last one being a quintuple, not a quadruple, like I had thought), everyone is asking my Mom and I all sorts of questions about Dad’s last by-pass. I have a pretty good memory of it since I was in the fifth grade when it happened but it’s strange to be the one everyone is coming to with their questions, since I’m filtering through the memories of a child. Of course, I remember a great deal of fear and then blinding hope that everyone would be alright.

I was able to tell everyone about Dad’s recovery from the by-pass. The family was worried that Devin’s Uncle C. would be unable to come down for Thanksgiving as the had planned and I assured everyone that he’ll definitely be able to come down for the event. The thing about a by-pass is that the procedure itself is not very difficult to recover from–the heart doesn’t sustain much damage from the procedure and mends quickly. It’s getting to the heart that creates such a painful and difficult recovery. Cutting through the ribs and then stapling them back together is inconceivably painful, and recovering from it takes months.

But the doctors and nurses will have Uncle C. on his feet and walking hospital hallways by Thursday, at the latest. If the procedure goes well then they’ll keep him completely sedated tomorrow and bombed with pain meds but, after a day of complete sedation, they’ll wake him up and get him moving. They did the same with my Dad and that was over a decade ago. In fact, the nurses gave my brother and I the job of walking him up and down the hallway every few hours while he was still in the hospital. He was released less than a week after the surgery, which is also very common as long as no complications arise from the post-op, and was sent home.

Of course, he had daily rehab appointments and was certainly not considered recovered by any stretch of the imagination, but he was home with us, and that’s all that mattered. He was also given a Hug-A-Bear, which is a large, rather flat and hard teddy bear that he hugged to his chest while coughing, which was meant to help rehabilitate his ribs and lungs. He was told to hug it and cough at least once an hour, and Johnny and I took turns bugging him to hug that bear and cough because he hated doing it (it was very, very painful but necessary).

I’m sure Uncle C. will get his own Hug-A-Bear and he’ll have just as difficult, and painful, a recovery but he will recover, for which we are all grateful.

Posted in Medical Melodrama