Still, after 10 days' worth of amoxicillin and a full course of Zithromax, now the doc has me on Levaquin. Hoo-frickin'-ray--and starting at 10 PM tonight I get to fast, so I can have a complete blood panel done tomorrow. Plus chest x-ray and EKG. *sigh*
As of today I've been sick for 18 days. The cough won't go away, I'm still having dizzy spells, and I feel rotten. This is some nasty kind of upper respiratory infection (URI) that I've got, here--the worst cold I've ever had, bar none.
I'm not prepared to rule out mono yet, though. Diseases don't always follow the game plan; I learned that from watching ER and House, MD. I expect one of the blood tests on the schedule for tomorrow is the monospot test--and if I do have mono, it means no heavy lifting for me for a while.
See, mono causes the spleen to become inflamed. The inflamed spleen can then burst if the patient overexerts himself. My job involves a lot of heavy lifting; if it is mono and I don't exercise some caution, I could end up in the hospital having my spleen removed.
Most worrisome is the fact that I can't even do something as mild as shopping for groceries without having dizzy spells. And even though I had a good night's sleep, I'm sitting here and feeling exhausted after a trip to the doctor's office--which was dull and routine, and mostly consisted of me sitting and waiting a lot.
But a diagnosis of "atypical mononucleosis" probably is not the way to bet. There was a four-day period where I was unable to cough, because it made my throat feel like it was being scoured by red-hot acid-soaked steel wool; it's more likely that I have some form of pneumonia or something, which--by itself--also means a few more days off from work, in all liklihood.
I'm not happy about any of this, but there is very little I can do about it. I can't do my job while I am suffering from a severe bacterial URI. Forget the staggering around part; part of my job requires that I operate heavy machinery, and I am in no shape to do that when I'm this sick.
If I were still writing technical manuals, I would have been at my desk nearly every day of the past couple of weeks. But in a job like that I don't have to move around and I can type while dizzy, so it wouldn't have been a problem for me to work through the illness. But my current job involves moving freight, using a pallet stacker, and driving a "mobile work platform"--and I can't do that if I start falling on my ass after two hours of mild work. (Did I mention that I almost fell out of the damned truck on Friday night? Did I?)
So I'm really frustrated.