running update: 23 months September 22, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in family, older son, running.Tags: health, medication, Mike, running
4 comments
I went for a run today for the first time in a month. It was nice, particularly since I could actually feel my feet the whole time.
Yeah, that sounds strange, doesn’t it?
I haven’t run the past month because I ended up in the hospital. Some of you may recall that about a year ago, I had a bad reaction to some medication. Some of my doctors have been dubious that this was the case, however, given the reaction was extremely rare. (By extremely rare, I mean I-managed-to-find-a-whole-three-medical-case-studies-on-pubmed rare.) I was given the medication again, and this time I had a similar reaction, only it didn’t stop when I stopped the meds…and I ended up spending some time in the hospital. Some of my (two) readers may have noticed I didn’t post much a couple weeks ago. That’d be why.
As an aside, while the hospital food wasn’t all that bad, I was very ticked that they put me on a ‘heart healthy’ diet despite my complete lack of metabolic disorder. I suspect I may have gotten some gluten contamination while there, as well. My husband has been informed that any future trips to the hospital will require him to cook and bring me food, which he thankfully said he’d do…although it may just be a lot of gluten free egg rolls and scrambled eggs. :-)
The good news is that things are getting better…I can stand long enough to teach my classes without getting dizzy and, as I said, feel my feet again…most of the time.
Needless to say, this is putting a bit of a damper on my race plans. I had planned to run a 10k next month with the older son, but I’m trying to take it slow. I’ll probably just try the 5k. I was initially rather upset that I’ve been running for almost two years now and am having to start over. However, after my run this morning, I came to an important realization: I ran more than I had planned because it felt good to get out and move. My body knows what it’s doing now, so I’m really not starting over…just giving myself some space.
I am now in the 1% June 6, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in personal.Tags: health, medication, transit, venus
7 comments
I had to go to the doctor for a checkup. While doing the checkup, she asked me some questions as to whether something or not was bothering me. I said yes, and she said she thinks I have an infection. She wrote me up a script for some antibiotics, and I was on my way.
I took the antibiotics on Monday night. As you probably read in my post on Tuesday, I was feeling pretty awful that day. It only got worse from there. I am currently writing up a proposal and got involved in a couple very technical discussions on Tuesday morning. Problem was, I couldn’t follow what anyone was saying. They may as well have been speaking Greek. (The only Greek words I know are the names for variables.) Mike said I seemed rather confused. I tried to go for a run after lunch. Usually my runs are 45 minutes. This time, I had to quit after 20 because my whole body was aching so badly. I felt like I had the flu. By dinnertime, I was feeling tired and weak and a bit dizzy. First I googled the meds I was taking to see if there was any relationship to fatigue. The one place I found that relationship explicitly stated, it said to call your healthcare provider immediately, so I called the nurse.
“The doctor prescribed this medication for an infection, and I think it’s making me extremely tired.”
“Of course you’re tired. You have an infection.”
“But I didn’t even know I had the infection until she told me. I had no symptoms until I started taking the medication.”
“Well, take it tonight and call your doctor in the morning.”
Helpful, eh?
I sat down to eat dinner, and contemplated whether or not to take the next dose of meds. However, my left arm started to feel incredibly cold, and I just didn’t feel right. Rather than going to see the transit of Venus with the local astronomy club, Mike brought me to the walk-in clinic. By the time we got there, my left arm was tingling, and the sensation was moving up my arm. Also, I started having problems focusing and kept blinking my eyes.
The doctor guessed that I was, in fact, having a pretty rare reaction to the medication and told me to stop. He said to wait a couple days, and if my symptoms cleared up, I should call my doctor and let her know.
I went home, glad I decided to forego another dose of the meds. Going to sleep was a problem because now my whole left side of my body was cold and tingling. My arm was the worst, but I could feel pretty strongly in my ear and knee, as well. I was exhausted and fell asleep quickly….and apparently said some odd stuff in my sleep, too.
I woke up this morning feeling better than the morning before, but still feeling like I was moving through molasses. My arm has mostly stopped tingling, but I did have off and on sensations of burning or cold in it. And then there were a couple of serious episodes of vertigo. Fortunately, all of this has decreased as the day has worn on, and I’m actually much more awake now than I was this morning.
My conclusion, therefore, is that I better be more careful and NOT make the assumption that a medication is safe. The symptoms I had aren’t as weird as the anti-nausea medication they gave me a few years back (which made me want to crawl out of my skin and then claw out my doctor’s eyes…that was very freaky…and apparently so common they almost never use the medication now), but they were nothing to sneeze at. (Incidentally, sneezing and flu symptoms are also considered dangerous side-effects of this medication.) I guess I didn’t think anything of it because I’ve had to take antibiotics about once a year for various sinus and ear infection-type problems. I really never expected to have any problems…and apparently only about 1% of people do.
Sometimes you don’t want to be in the 1%.
I can’t help feel disappointed that I missed the transit. Episodes like this also make me feel more unsure about modern technology. But I guess when you’re going to lose your faith, you can restore it by looking at images like this:
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