Back in mid-December, I came down with a nasty case of strep. I was exhausted and my throat hurt so much that I wanted to remove my tonsils with scalpel.
Fast forward to yesterday. We’d just gotten back home from a week-long trip. The kids have been in Texas visiting Granny & Grandad, and I was in Arizona, Washington DC, and then one day in Dallas. We got home after midnight on Wednesday. On Thursday, I started the day feeling good…doing laundry, unpacking bags, beginning blog posts, but then I started to feel run down. My throat started hurting. I felt my will to live ebbing. So I took a nap. And then I oozed around the house, from couch to chair.
When I woke up this morning unable to talk because of my painful throat, I decided I should get it checked out. So I don’t forget, here are my main symptoms of strep:
- Critically painful throat
- Fatigue.
- Decreased mental state where I am completely content watching terrible romantic movies or staring off into space rather than editing photos, writing blog posts, or even just surfing the web (all those activities seem way too taxing).
- No fever, but body shakes. And I feel like my internal thermostat is all out-of-wack.
When I went into Urgent Care this morning, the nurse did a throat culture and gasped when she saw my tonsils. “They are bleeding!” she exclaimed. “Oh, my goodness, that looks like it hurts!” Ahh, validation. Then when the doctor came in, he felt my tonsils and said, “Wow. Those are huge.” After looking at them, he asked if I’d seen them. “No,” I said. “You’ve gotta take a look at that,” he said. So he gave me the flashlighty thing and had me look in the mirror. Yup, pretty yucky – huge tonsils with white patches all over. In my enfeebled state, getting the sympathy of the doctors felt pretty good. Anyway, I’m on penicillin now, so hopefully that will have me feeling better by tomorrow.
All this talk of being sick makes me think of an old-time radio show that we oft-recited with Terry when I was growing up. It’s called “Beat the Reaper” by the Firesign Theater. Deeply ingrained in my family-lore. Enjoy!