Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
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Wednesday, February 07, 2018

I've been sick

On Sunday, we were playing the game and despite some caffeine, I was falling asleep through most of it, and it was very interesting.  YKWIA had a candid talk with me afterwards about contacting our family physician (we both go to him), as this just wasn't normal.

On Monday, I felt so terribly tired.  I was fuzzy, making mistakes (and hopefully catching them), but it was hard to do even basic scheduling, dragging, dropping, hitting all the drop-down menus, etc., keeping the days straight, and putting x-rays and doctors' visits on the same day.  In other words, 90% of what I do in a day became suddenly really hard.  I checked my blood sugar, which was a little over normal but not high enough to cause that sort of thing, and it wasn't low.

So at lunch, I went down to the employee nurse's office.  She was over at the university hospital getting something from the cafeteria there.  The education person, who is also a nurse and in her department, took my temperature and it was over 99 degrees--not terrible, but I run about 97, so it was a low-grade fever.  I was chilling in front of her, with goosebumps.  I had a headache, was aching all over, and was generally feeling really cruddy.  My throat was scratchy and hurting, as were my ears.  When the employee nurse saw me and heard about the fever and symptoms, she handed me some Tylenol to take with me, and sent me home, as it sounded like early influenza.  I told my boss, she said to go home, and I'm sure they rearranged things.  I had to be 24 hours without a fever without medication to return.  I drove home, although it was hard (I couldn't even listen to the radio, it just grated).  I got home, told my friend they'd sent me home with a fever, and YKWIA sent me to my room and away from him, but brought me tea with honey and homemade mushroom soup in a little while.  Then I went to bed and stayed there most of the next 24 hours.  I never even changed clothes.

I never did more than sneeze a few times and cough a little.  The tiredness and aching feeling were the worst.  I took my temperature regularly, with and without medicine, and still had a bit of a fever this morning.  I did finally get a shower and into other clothes today, and I was afraid I had a urinary tract infection on top of what was obviously something viral, so I made an appointment with my doctor and went this afternoon.  The good news is that I don't have a UTI.  He was thinking I had a viral syndrome of some kind until I mentioned how difficult it was to use the computer, text, etc.  The fog apparently happens with the flu.  He wrote me a note saying I could go back to work on Friday with the caveat that if I'm still feeling ragged they would extend it if needed. I let my boss know and she was fine with it, saying if I needed the extra time to let her know.  While I wasn't officially tested (the tests were on backorder, there's a shortage), both of them were pretty sure I had the flu, and I'm still very tired.  I think I'm going to go on to bed, in fact.  I just wanted to check in.

The doctor did say one of the reasons I wasn't having much in the way of an upper or lower respiratory infection was that it was ameliorated by my flu shot back in October.  It's mandatory where I work (we have one person in our department who can't take it, and she's pretty much relegated to working in her closed office and needs to wear a masque if she comes out).  So while I got the flu, the vaccine helped keep it to fatigue and a low-grade fever rather than getting worse.  He also thought I probably have the A strain, not the B strain that is worse this year.  He prescribed more rest as needed, saying it was the best thing I could do.  I guess I'm lucky--I haven't had the flu since I started taking the shots over a decade or more ago.  Technically I've lost as much time from work as I did the last, terrible flu I had (which was followed by a stomach bug).  That year I had three occurrences in one week, trying to keep coming back to work.  This time I had the good sense to just get some rest and my boss was very good about it, too.  So it's one occurrence.

So rest is exactly what I am about to do.  My spelling sucks tonight--I'm glad I have that Grammarly plug-in to help.  I'm still a little foggy, I guess.  Good night.

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