Sick and Quiet

I have spent seven weeks cycling through symptoms: sore throat that builds to feeling like I’m swallowing glass shards; a nose running like a fountain; and a splitting sinus headache with so much pressure it feels like my eye will pop out. No fun at all.

Initially I thought all of this was allergies, but it had lasted too long. When I woke up on the third straight day of a horrible sore throat, I’d had enough. Gargling with salt water gave me maybe 30 seconds of relief. Chloraseptic lasted about five minutes.

I couldn’t stand it any more, so down to urgent care I went.

As I sat waiting my turn to see a medical professional, I started to think about how I normally talk … a lot. For my brain to process things, it helps if I hear it out loud. One of the reasons I got Carmen (and even Kiki) was so I could talk out loud and not seem insane!

With this killer sore throat, I wasn’t talking. Every syllable was excruciating. It made for an eerily quiet household – DH2U was not making up for my silent void. It was driving me crazy.

Eventually I got in to see a nurse who put on a mask within two sentences of my description of symptoms. She took a throat culture for the strep test. Then left me in makeshift exam room created by drawing curtains closed. I could hear all the other cases around me. They all sounded like slip and fall injuries, so I wasn’t worried about catching their cooties.

A Physician’s Assistant came in about 20 minutes later, did the exam, saw I didn’t have strep (culture was done – I love those in office tests!), and declared that I had Uvulitis.

This of course made me laugh painfully since the SNL skit immediately came to mind.

Well in researching it, it doesn’t seem like it was the right diagnosis, but the logic behind the drug she gave me made sense.

What she wanted to prescribe me was a nasal steriod because it was all just allergies, and that would stop the inflamed sinuses. Unfortunately, I know from painful experience that I can’t tolerate them. She asked if I’d tried a few, I said yes to those and added in a couple more, and let her know that they cause a horrible sore throat immediately and a nose bleed within two days of starting treatment.

So I went on systemic steroids for five days to decrease the inflammation and give me a chance to fight the post nasal drip that was causing all the problems to start with. Within 24 hours I could talk again. In three days I was back to low grade sore throat, plus nose running like a faucet. At least by the end I was back to the old “normal” of lesser-grade symptoms. I’m hoping it doesn’t return with a vengeance now!

For now I’ll take it! My job involves talking for about an hour and a half straight, two to four times a day. Knowing that I won’t be in an unbearable amount of pain (and that I’m not contagious!) makes it so much better.

How many of you have seen the “Bab’s Uvula” skit? or Any other long-term allergy sufferers out there?