Sick
About two weeks ago I started feeling really bad. Weak, tired, and every pain was magnified by at least a factor of ten.
My throat started hurting more and more, and last Monday in the late afternoon I suddenly knew that I had to go see a doctor Now.
Fortunately my doctor's office is next to where I work, so I was able to get an appointment for eight minutes after I called - really! I didn't actually get to see my doctor, of course, but another doctor took a look, suspected strep, did three swabs of the back of my throat (which I hate going through, but she did it really well), and told me to stay home.
So on Tueday I stayed home. The strep tests came back negative, which apparently meant I just had a nasty virus. Nonetheless I went back to work on Wednesday.
But the throat thing got worse and worse. It was extremely painful and difficult to swallow. I needed maximum doses of tylenol in order to get any sleep or function during the day.
And the pain kept getting worse, and worse, and worse.
Friday I felt so awful that Teri drove up with Sebastian and took me home from work a few hours early. She dropped me off at the house to get some sleep, and went out with the baby.
But I couldn't sleep. The pain - or was it a second pain? - wouldn't let me. Now I not only had the sorest throat of my life, but the back of my tongue and the back side of my cheek and gums felt like they were burning up and hurt like hell.
This is hard to explain, but I started to suspect that in addition to a King Virus in my throat, I also had some sort of possibly unrelated bacterial infection somewhere in the back left side of my mouth. So I grabbed some hydrogen peroxide and started rinsing.
I won't get graphic, here. Don't worry.
Peroxide is really cool; it only foams up in the presence of infection. I don't know why that is. But in the space of a few minutes I'd converted a huge amount of peroxide to foam. I couldn't wait for the next dose of tylenol, so I took some prescription-strength ibuprofen that was left over in the medicine cupboard and went to sleep.
And woke up the next morning in pain, quite a lot of it, but a lot less than the night before. And when I rinsed with peroxide that morning, almost none of it turned into foam. Which leads me to suspect that I had been right, that there had been a second infection, and I managed to kill it with the peroxide. Now it's Monday, and I'm still on tylenol, but I feel a LOT better. So it looks like I did the right thing.
My throat started hurting more and more, and last Monday in the late afternoon I suddenly knew that I had to go see a doctor Now.
Fortunately my doctor's office is next to where I work, so I was able to get an appointment for eight minutes after I called - really! I didn't actually get to see my doctor, of course, but another doctor took a look, suspected strep, did three swabs of the back of my throat (which I hate going through, but she did it really well), and told me to stay home.
So on Tueday I stayed home. The strep tests came back negative, which apparently meant I just had a nasty virus. Nonetheless I went back to work on Wednesday.
But the throat thing got worse and worse. It was extremely painful and difficult to swallow. I needed maximum doses of tylenol in order to get any sleep or function during the day.
And the pain kept getting worse, and worse, and worse.
Friday I felt so awful that Teri drove up with Sebastian and took me home from work a few hours early. She dropped me off at the house to get some sleep, and went out with the baby.
But I couldn't sleep. The pain - or was it a second pain? - wouldn't let me. Now I not only had the sorest throat of my life, but the back of my tongue and the back side of my cheek and gums felt like they were burning up and hurt like hell.
This is hard to explain, but I started to suspect that in addition to a King Virus in my throat, I also had some sort of possibly unrelated bacterial infection somewhere in the back left side of my mouth. So I grabbed some hydrogen peroxide and started rinsing.
I won't get graphic, here. Don't worry.
Peroxide is really cool; it only foams up in the presence of infection. I don't know why that is. But in the space of a few minutes I'd converted a huge amount of peroxide to foam. I couldn't wait for the next dose of tylenol, so I took some prescription-strength ibuprofen that was left over in the medicine cupboard and went to sleep.
And woke up the next morning in pain, quite a lot of it, but a lot less than the night before. And when I rinsed with peroxide that morning, almost none of it turned into foam. Which leads me to suspect that I had been right, that there had been a second infection, and I managed to kill it with the peroxide. Now it's Monday, and I'm still on tylenol, but I feel a LOT better. So it looks like I did the right thing.