(no subject)

[felicula]

This damnable dry/sore throat et al. finally got me to the point of "Doctor. Now." Thank you dawnstar for helping me get there since mechanchaos was working, and thank you thank you thank you for watching Aidan while I was in there.

I'm not going to say much about Dr. A. I think I put it best when I said "it's like his nerves are crackling with schedule". I doubt I'll ever be certain if he really read / listened to my symptoms (since I had no voice going in). He took what seemed like a quick look at the list of symptoms that I'd carefully written, checked to see that my nodes were indeed swollen and said. "It looks like mono." Thing is, I've had that same thing happen with other doctors only to come up clean and never find out much than anything. (Aside: out and much too easily combine into ouch when typing about doctors...)

He took a throat culture, wrote me a script for amoxicillan, recommended some OTC cough medicines and gargling with salt water, then sent me off to the phlebotomy department.

The phlebotomist at LTH is pretty good at what she does, and she's more laid back than I am when I'm feeling mellow. (Aside: and I've been sought out by aquaintances at Vertex who requested to sit nearby to help them calm down - I've got strong natural grounding...) I pointed her towards the one elbow-region vein that anyone had ever successfully tapped and let her take a look. She found it no problem, and both needle and bloodletting was painless and quick. A little too quick, I thought.

She sends me off, dawnstar, Aidan, and I get out the Jeep, then the phlebotomist came running. She hadn't seen where it said to take some for a mono test too. She'd only taken for a hemocrit. Ugh. Still, better to be caught then, than have to go back in a day or two. Went back in. At first she tried the same vein, but it wasn't cooperating. She stopped swiftly though when I said it hurt. It's nice when a medical professional actually uses pain as a marker of when to cease. Then she went for the same vein in my other arm. This one hurt going in, but the vial was filled in as little time as the first vial had been. I've been poked and prodded much more viciously by others. It wasn't fun, but it could've been much worse.

So now, we wait. Though if it doesn't come up as mono, I'm seriously considering bugging them about hypothyroidism. I've been curious about that ever since shortly after giving birth to Aidan. I've heard it can take a lot of tests to really find it, though, even if one has it.

In the meantime I've been reading about mono on the Mayo Clinic site. I'm not certain what the range on symptoms and severity is on mono. I wonder what the blood test will have to say about things. A couple days should tell the results of the current test.

Comments

[blackfelicula.livejournal.com]

How much did it drop your energy level? What were the symptoms of it that bugged you most, which ones prompted you to see the doctor? What treatment was recommended for you? ***will ask more when she thinks of more***

[kareila]

How much did it drop your energy level?

It's hard to say. I was a sophomore at MIT; I wasn't sleeping enough to begin with. But I was definitely dragging more than usual, and I remember having to miss a couple of classes in order to rest up.

What were the symptoms of it that bugged you most, which ones prompted you to see the doctor?

I felt like I was coming down with generic uck, maybe an ear infection. I went to the doctor twice and got antibiotics twice. It wasn't until my throat closed up and stopped working, about three weeks after my first symptoms, that I went to the doctor for a third time and was correctly diagnosed.

What treatment was recommended for you?

They put me on some type of steroid - a treatment that I believe was experimental at the time (1995), but is more widely used now. Thanks to the steroid, my throat was back to normal the very next day, and I was feeling totally well a few days later.

[blackfelicula.livejournal.com]

Wow - Your experience with it is definitely different from what one often hears about the "wiped out for months" of mono. It's nice to know that there is a range to it. The Mayo Clinic site mentioned the use of a kind of steroid specifically for treating the throat swelling. It sounds like what they gave you.