Long time no see 

25 Jun 2007

Almost exactly one month ago (maybe closer to five weeks), I started feeling just a little ill. Back pain and general overall soreness, just enough to make me feel uncomfortable. About a week after the pain started, I added a ~101 degree fever to the mix. It's Memorial Day weekend, and I'm laying on my couch trying to figure out what's going on and if I need to hit the hospital. I'm pounding ibuprofen like they're candy (and I'm not big on taking any sort of medicine), just trying to keep the fever down and the back pain from causing me to want to punch walls.

After about 3 days of the fever, I got into the urgent care clinic to see a doctor who did some quick work, ran a couple of tests and diagnosed me with a kidney infection. It explained all of my symptoms. So, he prescribed some antibiotics and sent me on my way. Things seemed to work. Within a few days (all of which I spent at home, as I was unable to head into the office), my fever was generally gone, I had almost no back pain, and generally felt ok.

Except for a sore throat. My throat started to feel, for lack of a more scientific term, "icky" pretty much as I finished the antibiotic run. It started to swell, and I could see the trademark white spots that indicate strep throat.

Perfect.

So, on a follow-up visit, my doctor checked my throat. Could be strep, but it seemed unlikely. Could be thrush, my body's reaction to the antibiotics. Or, very unlikely, it could be mono.

Mono would explain everything, but I hadn't been tired and the symptoms had come serially, not at the same time. It would, at least, be an odd case of mono.

A day later I found out it was an odd case of mono.

So, for another 8 days or so, I dealt with the sore throat. There's nothing they could prescribe. I probably took somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 ibuprofen and two full bottles of NyQuil/Tylenol stuff (to soothe my throat and keep a cough down) over that week or so.

Finally, I had a few days of being tired, sleeping 10 hours of night and waking up wanting to sleep some more. But, I was able to rejoin normal life -- playing a little softball, going out a few times, even taking in a concert (Dear Leader, yay!).

So, that's why I've been MIA from my wonderful blog. I've been getting my ass kicked by mono. But, given all the research I've done, I've held my own. Most mono cases seem to be a bit more ass-kicking than mine was, and generally last a bit longer. It's been just about a month, maybe a week longer, from start to finish. I'd say, at this point, I'm at almost 100%. The last two days have seen the last remnants of my cough go away, and I've been able to exercise and even run without feeling too bad. Later this week, I'll have an ultrasound to make sure my spleen is normal size. If it is, I'm good. If not, well, who knows. I'm betting that I'm given the all clear.

Hopefully, I'll settle back into a more regular writing schedule. Being sick, combined with work, combined with some other "real life" stuff has taken up some time that I'd normally devote to blogging. But, hopefully I'll get energized to write again and be a bit more prolific. I've got some interesting work stuff, some tech stuff, and hopefully some music stuff to write about.

In the meantime, here's my mea culpa for having been MIA. Won't happen again. Promise.