Unhappy Birthday

Saturday was my birthday. Unfortunately I spent most of it cowering in bed and finally going to the emergency room in the middle of the night. This is another one of those stories that needs a ‘put down your sandwich’ warning.

It all started around lunch time with a painful bowel movement involving a bit of blood. Not a good sign, but other than that I seemed fine at that point.

Around 2pm I started feeling a bit tired and run down.

By 3pm I noticed I had a fever. It was 38C at this point. I took a Naproxen and took a rest.

By 4pm I was having bad chills and fever was up to 39C. This was after taking Naproxen which usually works well for fevers. I was drinking lots of water and since I had no nausea, it was staying down, so I wasn’t worried about dehydration.

Somewhere after this I took a second Naproxen. This eventually got things down to 38C or so, and I proceeded to do some sleeping.

I was able to get up and eat a bit of bagel and some more water in the evening and go back to bed still at around 38C. Around 2:30am I woke up again and back up to 39C, and very sore all over. Tried some more Naproxen and my wife gave me an icepack, but it just wasn’t enough, so we headed off to Mackay Hospital’s emergency room.

I was admitted with fever and high pulse rate with suspected dehydration. They took some blood to test, gave me a jab with some fever reducing medicine, and hooked me up to an IV. After just over a liter of saline and a few hours, I was feeling better so they gave me some medicine and sent me home. Been pretty much fine since then, thankfully. Blood test came back normal, so they aren’t exactly sure what it was.