I suppose no one missed me, but I’m back. Unlike most times I fade away, this time I was gone because I haven’t felt well, starting with flu in mid-October, followed by an upper respiratory infection, followed by a lower respiratory infection, followed by….
That went on until just about a week ago. Unfortunately, it isn’t uncommon that people with GPA (Wegener’s granulomatosis) have this sort of medical issue, serial infections. Our immune systems are compromised to varying degrees, and your darling snot-clotted toddler is a germ bomb to us, no matter how much we love you and your toddler!
Weggies learn to watch for people about to sneeze. Weggies wash their hands- a lot! Weggies try to cultivate good medical resources, doctors and nurses familiar with their disease, preferable from handling dozens of weggies in the practice of medicine. Weggies might offend you by turning down invitations to attend public affairs where people might be passing on the latest and greatest virus or germ.
Weggies have good cause to be a bit paranoid and hyper about picking up a “bug”. I let my guard down in October long enough to pick up the start of two months of misery. I’m better now. The person who shared their illness with me probably had a day or two of flu, then enjoyed the rest of fall, the Thanksgiving holiday, the build up to Christmas.
I celebrated Thanksgiving by eating some crackers with peanut butter the Monday before Thanksgiving, then eating pretty much the same thing that Thursday evening. (I added cheese to the crackers I didn’t eat with peanut butter.) There were many days I wasn’t up to food. Yes, I had diarrhea in the mix of illnesses, too. Fun.
I had sufficient food supplies on hand I could have made soup from scratch. I’m a pretty good soup maker, thought often about making a big pot I could eat over a few days. Somewhere in the two months of illness, though, I lost 35 pounds. That happens when you find it easier not to fix something to eat let alone take the easy way out and heat up some soup from a can!
I slept a lot, though I often woke up soaked in sweat from a fever that struck in the night.
My two Persian cats, brothers Andy and Dougy, came to visit me in my bed and made sure I got up, at least, to feed and give them water. They missed me playing cat games with them, and often times I’d wake up and one of the boys had left a favorite toy by my bed, hoping that would encourage the desired behavior.
All of this left me very weak. I barely could walk a few feet to my car. The one time I managed to get to the grocery store, I was so exhausted by the time I got to the checkout, that I had to sit, huffing and puffing, sweating in a chair the store provides for disabled or elderly people.
Yes, all because someone didn’t stay home the day they were shedding flu virus. Of course, I planned to get a shot, but the flu found me first. Now I’m back.
So are you feeling ok now? It’s been a while!
I am feeling much better now! Thank you. I have periodic bad times, followed by long good times. I don’t know when they will hit, but usually they involved flu or some sort of respiratory illness that takes forever to end.
I probably should have asked for help, but I am a guy…! It’s only looking back, though, that I have some sense of how seriously ill I was. Regardless, people need to be more careful about not spreading infectious diseases, even the ones we think of as not serious (colds) because there are people with immune systems that are suppressed out there (elderly, people on chemotherapy, for two examples) who will have a more severe response to the disease than an otherwise healthy person. I am doing fine now, but it took a long time to regain health.
ooooooh….. I WAS!!!!! I was worrying where the hell did you disappear!!! :-))
And i hope you are better now….. i wasn’t much healthy too…. (damn bratz) but not as bad as you were. I hope you had someone to help you?????