A Rough Few Days

Early last week was quite lousy as far as my health goes.  I was down doing absolutely nothing for three days.  As the week progressed, I started to feel a bit more like myself.  By Friday, I was feeling better than I had in recent memory.  Unfortunately, that was short lived, very short lived, as it usually is.  

Feeling as good as I was, I actually did think that maybe my health was about to crash.  This is the usual thing for me.  I feel better than I have in a long while and then, usually within hours, my health suddenly plunges into anaphylaxis.  This time I felt really good through Thursday, then even better on Friday...  I must have been feeling pretty good on Saturday because I don't remember any remarkable problems.  I think I was thinking that with all the extra medications I took earlier in the week, I should be feeling better than I have in quite a while so I sort of pushed this old pattern out of my thoughts.  

I'm still hobbling around with my knee injury.  Even though it is healing quite slowly, it is getting better over time so that is good.  I just do not want to reinjure it so I am being extra cautious this time around...  perhaps even a bit over-cautious.  At this point, I'd rather be over-cautious than to reinjure my knee again.  

I'm at the point where I am able to do some very careful stretching and, believe me, after many months of inactivity, my right leg needs a lot of stretching.  In another week or two, I'll get more involved in daily physical therapy.  

On Sunday, after a few days of feeling better than usual, my health crashed worse than it has in a very, very long time.  It was definitely an epinephrine type of day.  Actually, it was a multiple use of epinephrine type of day.  That was the first time in a long while that I was actually a bit nervous about my health.

I wasn't feeling all that great by mid-day.  I was a bit nauseated and just not feeling "right".  I couldn't actually put my finger on what was wrong but I knew something wasn't right.  I was kind of shaky, weak and terribly fatigued but the fatigue thing isn't so unusual so I didn't think much of these symptoms.  The nausea isn't an every day thing so I knew that was a problem though.  I had a lot more joint and bone pain again and that is always a sign of mast cell activity.  Then again, joint and bone pain has been bordering on unbearable for more than a year and a half now so what does more bone and joint pain mean?  Unfortunately, I likely wasn't thinking very clearly due to the mast cell activity causing cognitive issues so I didn't recognize a couple of big warning signs of impending danger.

Early in the afternoon on Sunday, I started having vision issues.  The vision issues were actually a bit worrisome.  I was seeing what appeared to be a string of Christmas lights in my peripheral vision.  It actually looked like the weather forecast symbol for a cold front...  a line with triangles on it.  At first, I was just thinking that this might be a retina problem and that thought wasn't making me feel too good.  About five minutes into this, I started to slowly realize that this could be my body slowly dropping into anaphylaxis.  These vision issues were probably similar to "seeing stars" or getting sparkles in my eyes which is a dire warning of anaphylaxis.  Usually when anaphylaxis appears, I get narrowing vision with sparkles around the outside periphery of my vision.  This time was a little different but it was still affecting my peripheral vision so I went for my epinephrine.  

Once...  twice with the epinephrine...   wait some more...  I still had the problem...  my vision was actually getting worse...  that very pronounced "cold front symbol" was being obscured by sparkles...  now my vision was clearly narrowing...  I needed more epinephrine...  now, about five minutes after the first of the epinephrine, I decided I needed more...  finally, after the fourth time, the epinephrine started to help my body respond to the anaphylaxis.  I was feeling quite lousy at this point...  hmmm, miserable really...  I was exhausted but fighting falling asleep.  When my health gets like this it can be difficult to differentiate between just needing a nap and losing consciousness due to anaphylaxis.  I didn't want to nap until I was sure I wasn't losing consciousness.  

It is a very odd feeling when you're feeling exhausted and like you were hit by a train but you are also jittery and sort of hopped-up from the epinephrine.  This is where I was at this point.  It was sort of a convoluted mismatch of debilitating symptoms.

I decided to take a bunch of emergency medications too....  some usual over-the-counter stuff, some non-FDA-approved medications and a bit extra of my most expensive medication (although epinephrine is up there too...  hmmm...  I might need to refill that prescription now...).  After about another half hour, I started to feel a bit more stable.  I didn't realize how unstable my health was feeling until I started feeling somewhat stable again.  My emergency medications make me very drowsy so I knew that I would be falling asleep at some point.  At this point, I had felt like I was hit by a train and my whole body hurt and I was exhausted.  Fortunately, my vision was back to normal.  When my vision returned to normal, I knew that this was all anaphylaxis and not a retina issue.  

Later on Sunday night, I took even more additional emergency medications and headed to bed.  Yesterday (Monday) was "fair", I suppose.  Today, I'm feeling better than yesterday so that is good.  I'm still not feeling great but I'm feeling okay.  I'm exhausted.  It's only 9:30am and I am already ready to go back to bed.