Misplaced Optimism

You ever really, genuinely believe that things are about to get better? That you’ve turned the corner and gotten past the hardships and are ready to move on to greener pastures? Then had reality snap that optimism right back into your smiling face?

Four days after my last post, where I concluded that I was looking forward to putting the car accident behind me and moving on to better things, I started feeling off. Stepped outside to walk Vally and began shivering so hard it became hard to walk or breathe. Made a late-night trip to CVS to buy a thermometer and found I was rocking a fever of 102+. Ouch. Off to bed with me.

I don’t remember ever having a flu before, but the next two days were a lot like I imagined a flu to be. Severe headaches, high fever, sleeping whenever I wasn’t dealing with car repairs, getting food, or stumbling around the block with Vally. By the end of the second day, my shoulders and neck were hurting. Flu leaves sore muscles, right? Must be that. By the middle of that night, I was googling “flu stiff neck” and came across the symptoms for meningitis. Uh oh. I wasn’t sure if I should be laughing at myself for middle-of-the-night medical paranoia or calling 911 to be rushed to the hospital. Ultimately, it seemed that the really critically scary meningitis varieties (bacterial and fungal) kill within a day or so. I was already outside of that, so I decided it couldn’t be either. I set an alarm for the middle of the night so I could wake up and assess whether or not I was dying and slept.

By day 5 the flu symptoms had worn off. No fever, energy starting to come back. I tried to go to work. It quickly became clear all was not well. Headaches lingered. Nausea started. I was getting vertigo if I moved my head too fast. Lights were unusually bright, even indoor ones, and hurt to look at for very long. I had trouble processing visual information - couldn’t skim over labels at the grocery store, instead having to focus hard on each one in order to process what it said. I had repeated short-term memory loss, like thinking that I needed to text someone, picking up my phone, and being stunned to find that I had already sent the text 60 seconds ago. Scary.

I went to an urgent care. They ran me through strep tests, flu tests, and a full blood panel, all of which came back negative. They sent me home and told me to call 911 immediately if the fever came back. Yikes.

The cognitive issues slowly faded, and I assumed I’d be better shortly. Two weeks later the joint pain started. Weakness in my hands and forearms. The next day my right knee and ankle started to hurt.. The next day my ankle was so tightly locked up I was sure I’d snap my achilles tendon if I pushed it. Tingling in the fingers of my left hand started. I gave it a week and a half before I found myself back in the urgent care. More blood work, a full joint panel, all negative. No Lyme, no Lupus, no gout, no arthritis, nothing.

So here I am. It’s been 6 weeks since the initial flu-like symptoms hit and I’m not at 100%. Better, but not 100%. I just went to an eye doctor to confirm that the headaches aren’t related to eye problems, and they are not. Tests back negative, just like every other test I’ve run through. At this point, my working theory is that I did indeed have viral meningitis. I mistook it for the flu until it was too late, and the lingering issues with sight, balance, and memory are born of the infection that originally caused my stiff neck. The joint pain seems to be some sort of out-of-whack autoimmune response. I discovered my sister, Karen, ran into something similar with her joints after contracting lyme and mono in a single season. In her case, it took about two months to stabilize. That means I should be just about back to normal a week or so into 2020. I hope. I pray.

The symptoms haven’t been unbearable. There haven’t been any days where the pain or immobile joints were enough to push me past what I’m able to deal with. But the amount of time spent laid out in bed, taking nap after nap when i have so much I want to be accomplishing, has been a real difficult thing for me to take. Hard as I try I can’t work on projects, I can’t exercise, and even reading makes headaches worse. Most of all, I think the not knowing what’s wrong has been the hardest thing to cope with. I’m not one to go rushing into doctor’s offices every time something feels off, but it’s hard to allow yourself to lay back and rest when you’re not sure if you’re getting better or worse. At this point, with every reasonable test coming back negative, it seems pretty safe to assume that I must be getting better, but I suppose I won’t know for sure until the symptoms are either gone or faded enough to not factor into my day to day.

I look forward to steady progress. To waking up in the morning and not feeling compelled to do a quick all-systems check to see how my body is working today. To having the energy for working on the things that matter to me. Here’s to hoping that that is only one more month away.

Next post should be less ranting to nobody about scary medical issues and more noting the fun things I’ve been doing and working on. Not a given by any means, but, in spite of my last post and this title, I’m still hanging on to that optimism.

fingers crossed

-M