Viral Meningitis

So...time for the story of my week.  It's quite an exciting tale so get ready for a page turner.  Well, not exciting for me, but interesting anyway.  I'll start where it started for me.

Sunday evening.  I was cold.  Really cold.  Shivering cold.  It was 100 degrees out.  It was over 80 degrees in my bedroom.  Why was I shivering?  No clue.  I put on long sleeves and socks and went to bed.

Monday was a busy day.  Shawn and I were out running errands.  I started with a little headache that morning.  Nothing out of the ordinary, but by lunchtime it was getting much worst.  I was having some nausea along with it and some sentivitiy to light.  We came home early from our errands and I took a nap (from 3pm-7pm).  When I woke up my headache was better but I was still tired.  I went to bed for the night at 10pm...after all I had to work on Tuesday.

Tuesday was an up early day since I was scheduled to be in charge at work.  I had a headache all day, but nothing I couldn't handle.  I wasn't overly hungry but I wasn't nauseated either.  I had just a twinge of sore throat with some phlegm early in the day but it didn't last (so I assumed it was from the fan during the night).  Again, when I got home from work I was exhausted, so another night in bed before 10pm.

Wednesday is when it all started going downhill.  The headache was till with me when I woke up, and had actually woken me up during the night once.  I tired to get some stuff done by rotating ibuprofen, Excedrin, and Norco...but nothing was helping.  I called the doctor to make an appointment but they weren't going to be able to fit me in until Friday at 4pm...no way I was going to last that long with this kind of headache.  I started having muscle cramping too...just another thing to add to my discomfort for the day.  I tried to just relax.  Took a hot bath while keeping an ice pack on my head (and by ice pack I mean a bag of frozen peas).  I made mom turn off all the lights (and if you know her at all you know she hates not having the lights on!).  I sat on the couch with my feet up with the "ice pack" on my head and mom and I watched a quiet movie.  Still no change in the headache.  When Shawn got home from work we decided it was time to go to the ER.

After a head CT scan and a Lumbar Puncture in the ER...the decided I had meningitis.  At that time they weren't sure if it was viral or bacterial (and it makes a huge difference in treatment and prognosis) so they decided to keep me in the hospital.  The only thing that was working for my headache was morphine IV (and they had tried Dilaudid too...) so after 8 hours in the ER I made it to my room in the hospital.

The Infectious Disease doctor says I probably got the virus from Logan.  He said kids in daycare typically will come home with a fever at least once a month (Logan does).  He says this is usually due to a virus of some sort.  Not ususally bad enough to make the kinds really since (they have such strong immune systems) but sometimes it can get transmitted to other people (like helpless Auntie Lisa) who get he virus too.  The virus will ususally take 2-3 days to cause an infection (Logan had a fever at my house last Friday - 2 days prior to my shivers) and the infections are usually non-specific type symptoms (like a cold or something).  Occasionally it can move to a part of the body it shouldn't (like the meninges of the brain and spinal cord) and cause meningitis.  Which is what happened to me.  There isn't really any treatment, just pain medication to help with the symptoms (the headache) and I just have to rest and drink plenty of water and wait for the virus to be done with me.  I'm hoping I'll start feeling like myself again in a few days.

So that is my story.  What a week.