Thursday, February 18, 2016

Paratyphoid Fever - Hello! (Part 1)

You know how you have your entire holiday planned out and it's going to be awesome cause you have the ball rolling, you update your blog on time, regularly too, you smile gleefully as well cause someone actually reads what you write. You even have games lined up to play and review, and also a pair of headphones for the same treatment. I even baked a bit and I finally got the recipe right, everything seems great and then...

PARATYPHOID FEVER

You can wiki it if you want (though you shall be frowned upon by your doctor friends), but those words were a relief for me to hear. You know why? Also please note that by asking why, you've set yourself up for another one of my story telling sessions~

Fever... Obviously getting sick was the last thing I would expect to disrupt a perfectly good holiday. I was home, good nutritious food, plenty of sleep, not a care in the world, not something that should lead to being sick. I mean, if I were in university things would be different, irregular and unbalanced meals, lack of sleep, and stress are perfect recipes for being sick. It's like you're just begging to get ill, but I digress.

It started with a really bad headache, as though metal pipes were being pressed into my head at several different spots at once. Well, I thought, nothing a quick massage won't fix, that it did, but only for a few minutes, then we were back to square one. I slept, thinking I was tired, didn't go away. It was only at night after I was done playing heroes of the storm (cause you gotta work for that Li Ming) did I realize, oh this was going to be fever. I drank lots of water and brought a bottle upstairs in case I wake in the middle of the night. I thought I was armed enough with panadols and water. How wrong I was.

The next day, I had errands to do so my parents woke me so I could start the day early. It was then where I uttered the million dollar sentence, "I'm sick," A quick feel on the forehead and they knew as well. The problem was, this fever was different than those other fevers I used to have, usually a quick pill and I can just go about my day normally, but this fever, pills didn't seem to do anything, my head ached constantly, which at that point metal pipes were being pressed at nine different spots in my head. I could barely get up, and my body burned like it was trying to kill itself. My only remedy at that point was water, everytime I woke from the heat and pain, I answered with a drink of water.

Day 3, and my fever was not letting down. So my mom brought me to see a doctor. It didn't help that my fever somehow knew when it was going to be studied and I must say, the times I visited the doctor were the times I felt the most healthy. The doctor assumed it was normal fever cause by a bacterial infection so I got antibiotics and painkillers for my headache. (not that it did anything, also note that this was trip 1 to the doctor, more to come soon) The medicine did nothing, I was bedridden most of the time, as soon as I could lie down I would fall asleep, my body would burn myself awake and I would find a way to remedy that, go back to sleep, rinse and repeat. No playing games, no baking, no nothing, if I were a king, my bed would be my throne, and I started getting weak.

What used to be me determined to fight my fever became me struggling for sleep. Nice, uninterrupted sleep. Because so far, I've been living off an hour's worth of sleep before being woken. To the point I began dreaming of doing real things, like its hot, better turn on the aircond, to which I would, but I actually didn't. I would wake up frustrated but too weak to do anything about it, go back to sleep, dreamed of the problem solved and wake to be disappointed again. And I must be completely honest, it can drive you mad. Because in my great discomfort all I wanted was peace, a moment of uninterrupted rest. That I did get, for a short time, the fever would go away, giving way to cold sweat and with it, comfort to which I used for sleep, but it didn't last, at most was 2 hours and I was back to being sick.

But nothing would have prepared me for the fall, a week into my fever, that night I was feeling worse than I normally was, so I barely got any sleep, and as the morning came, I figured I would get myself some water. As I got up, my head just pressed on me, I opened the door and my vision started blurring, I knew I was going to faint, so I thought, I should step away from the stairs, better I fall here than down the stairs. I took a step back (genius) but being in my current state, I lost balance and fell. My head banged against the door and I just lay there, cold sweat came and the pain was gone, a silver lining.
My parents came soon after, so did my brother, the bang obviously alerting them. That was when they knew something was off, this wasn't normal fever.

To be continued in part 2,

Sorry guys for not posting for such a long time, but this fever has been going on for a month now and I'm only now starting to get better, the doctors only knew it was paratyphoid fever after 3 weeks, and I could literally do nothing other than eat, sleep and go to the toilet for those 3 weeks. I am writing this post on my phone as I still can't sit for long hours, my recovery is expected to take 1-2 weeks so pray for my swift recovery and I look forward to getting back to my regular schedule!

Have fun and get yourself checked if your fever persists for more than 3 days (seriously)



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