I rang in my birthday this year curled up on the couch in the fetal position trying to survive one of the worst sinusitis infection I have ever had.
I think the source of my illness jumped across the bacterial / viral line quite a few times over that 10-14 day period! One minute I felt it was viral with the body aches, generalized pain everywhere and that energy-zapped life-less body movement thing. I swear it took everything in me just to get out of bed and fall onto the couch. I mean my eyeballs hurt to blink and the hair that I don’t have on my head hurt!
Then it transitioned to the gravity-dependent, my head is going to explode sinus-focused terror. My head felt like a 100lb dumbbell and I reveled during those very brief moments of breathing through both nostrils.
I missed a whole week of school – and that was AFTER spring break. Thankfully I didn’t miss much other than class time.
-WHEW-
Fast forward about 14 days and a wonderful Z-pack later. I still have some sniffles lingering -nothing like when I was down and out – but annoying none-the-less at times. I’m back at school, back to the gym, back to feeling my humanish self again.
I just wanna know where the heck did I catch that darn bug? What did I do wrong? Do differently??!!
I haven’t had a ‘head-cold’ in over 3 yrs. I quite honestly I cannot remember the last time I was ever that sick?? If I had lost my appetite I surely would have been hospital bound. Thankfully I could consume soup on a daily basis and I forced the fluids as much as I could tolerate.
As a side note – I never, ever realized how dehydrated one can get just from oozing and blowing mucus from their nostrils??!!
Sorry – overshare.
Anyhoo.. Back to me and my immune system. What the heck happened? I mean I work in a hospital. Cross many-a-paths with the sick and ill. My poor wife has battled through a couple dooozy’s of a illness over the past couple years. I’ve been exposed to H1N1. I have had my flu shot annually (including the H1N1 vaccine).
I wash my hands too much in my opinion – since my hands get so dry they crack and split at my fingertips at times.
I don’t use nor abuse the darn hand sanitizer gels (no antibiotic resistance here).
I take my vitamins. I eat right. I sleep a ‘decent’ amount (not great, but decent).
???
The only thing that was new in my ‘equation’ of life has been school. Or should I say Graduate school. I started NP school this past fall.
The only real difference I can postulate is the fact that I’m ‘burning my candle at both ends’. I took a heavy load of classes this semester. I definitely bit off more than I could chew with multiple assignments from different classes pelted at me as if it’s target practice. I commute 4 days a week to class. So my day is choc-full of deadlines on a weekly basis. I do things in ‘chunks’ since I’m either in my car or in class most of my week.
Stress.
I think the self-induced wallop of stress definitely knocked my immune system down a few notches.. And with the right combination one of those damn ‘bugs’ got me.
Ahh well. Live and learn.
Lessons learned:
- I will never take this many graduate classes at one time ever again
- I will not commute this many times in one week ever again
- It doesn’t matter how healthy you think you are – the bugs are stronger
- It doesn’t matter how strong you think you are – the bugs are stronger
- Sooner or later…… everyone gets sick
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