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Well I awoke this morning feeling a bit better again, less symptomatic, no unusual noises emanating from my body, but most importantly, my mouth sores were slightly better. I can swallow with little pain today, yay!
Now here I am monitoring my heart rate and taking my blood pressure because my heart rate is 135. I noticed it when I first woke up that my heart rate was higher than usual, and now they want me to go to the ER. The problem with this situation is that I hate ERs, and I really don't like being in hospitals more than I have to be. So should I go then? They're just going to give me more drugs. On top of my towering regimen of drug consumption, I don't need any more of that crap. I'm tired of drugs. This is the whole thing I wanted to avoid in the first place. Once you put one foot in, they take your whole body and tell you that, "Its for the best."
So let me start at the beginning. Houston has a problem that us non-Houstonians are unfamiliar with. They keep things ridiculously cold. It'll be a hot, humid summer day and everyone's walking around in pants and jackets like it's crisp fall weather (I must say that, as Atlantans, we felt like Yanks for not being familiar with this). The problem with this situation is that upon entering a building it was absolutely freezing inside. Not expecting this as a city-wide behavior (at first, we thought it was just a few of the wealthier thermostat happy buildings), we didn't learn to expect it until shortly before we left.
So the reason why I'm writing about all of this is to inform you about the extensive temperature interior/exterior variation differentials occurring among Houstonians in their dwellings. Kidding, that sounds really boring. Its that I don't think it's healthy to have so much extreme hot/extreme cold change per day. I think this may be where the trouble started. Sweating in the sun, then freezing for a few hours in an office aren't the most appropriate ways to maintain a healthy immune system.
After getting on all my medication, the last one had the most side effects. Rash--like the beautiful one I'm exhibiting above--was basically guaranteed. So after taking all the medication for a few days, the rash began to appear around my shoulders. They said it was a good thing that I was getting the rash, and I should just sit back and enjoy the ride. So I took that as a good sign and within a few days, we were heading back to Atlanta.
I noticed the sores in my mouth shortly after the rash showed up. But they got worse and worse, and now they're so bad that I can't speak, eat or swallow anything without enduring tidal waves of pain. Now I just answer yes and no questions to everyone as much as possible. But I've gotten ahead of myself here. So yesterday my Dad and I discovered that Oral Thrush is fairly common in people in my situation. Then we discovered that the sores were white and of course, so were mine. So we needed to go to the doc-in-the-box down the street for a quick medication prescription that I desperately needed. The doc said that the sores in my mouth didn't look exactly like the ones that he was accustomed to seeing. So they jammed an elongated q-tip up my nose then scraped some of my sores with a separate one to get test results. When they came back, it turned out that I had Swine Flu compounded by a horrible Oral Thrush outbreak. I got to leave that building with a nice little facial mask on.
Positive Note: I won't have to deal with any mouth sore crap with the future use of this medication, which is great because I'm getting really tired of it by now.
This is a picture of from the left, Dr. Joseph, me, Dr. Burzynski, Dr. Weaver, and my dad. It was roughly my last day, and its a great little souvenir regardless of the outcome here. I'm really glad I took it, too--just us and the docs.
This program has been far from easy, though. I've developed a rash all over my face and chest. It looks kind of like a seriously bad case of acne, so unfortunately I'm taking an unwanted trip back to the dredges of 8th grader-dom. It's pretty bad though. I'm losing skin on top of that, too. Don't ask me why. I'm pretty sure my body hates me. With my vast array of medicinal products, I won't need to eat anymore, just take more medicine.
