The last 4 days....

	Museums, mysterious rashes, spinal taps, and spontaneously combusting kitchen glassware(or as my mom says, "spontaneous crumbilation")... wtf is up for tomorrow...

So on Friday after my dad was picking me up from the Children's Hospital in DC (I'm working there for the summer), we realized we had close to 4 hours to kill before picking mom up from the greyhound station. So we were walking around and chilled at the mall and sat on the steps of the west building of the national gallery of art, and decided to go to a museum, and all the nearby museums were closed apart from the Natural History Museum(though my dad and I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the scale model of the Solar System outside of the National Air and Space Museum). Anyway, my toes started itching, but i thought it was just seaonal allergies, and or my long socks with unnecassary buttons on the sides, along with my realy thin and overly used plaid shoes, possibly reacting to the really stoney and sandy pathways. Anyway,Dad learned a lot during this walk, and I showed of my mad brain skillz and profuse knowledge of a wide variety of random topics, blah blah.

We then journey's to potbelly's, and rested there. I forgot to mention I had a slight fever[and i REALLY mean slight, like, maybe 99-99.5] , sore throat, and a tiny bit of trouble breathing. although, at the time I thought It was just seasonal allergies supplemented by an oncoming cold (I wasn't sneezing or coughing, so I didn't believe I was putting anyone in immediate danger (later on i'll find out that I wasn't contagious at all, so no need to call occupational health on all the employees at Children's National Medical Center, baha). Also, I had een having on/off sore throat for about a month. I was tired, so we rested and chilled at potelly's till about nine after leaving the museum at around 7:30[when it closes during the summer], and then we started walking back to the car (it was getting dark). We drove around DC, looked at the Georgetown area, and then went to pick mom off from the greyhound station at around 10:30. Then we drove home and finally got there at around 12 something, i went to bed, dismissing the itching on my feet, and went to sleep.

Day 2:
So on Saturday, I wake up and I was like "woah what an odd ridiculously profuse and concentrated amount of rindiculous small spots on my feet. I was all "wtf" but I wasn't spazzing yet. I took a shower, trying not to itch my mysterious rash on mah poor adorable feet. I got ressed, came dowstairs, and my mom started doing that thing that she does where she goes into doctor mode and attempts to diagnose me, and none of my symptoms were matching up to anything probable. My mom put some cortizone on it and went shopping. When she got home around 7 and after watching a breif movie with my parents, I was like "Hey mom, look, my rash spread up to my knees!" (I was unusually excited. My life is pretty boring and traumatizing, so anything intresting that doesn't involve family related drama is a Godsend). My mom was like"Hmm... let's take you to the ER since your rash didn't stop spreading after the cortizone" and my dad was like "I suggested we take her this morning!" and proceeded to drive us there.

So we got to the hospital emergency room around 9-9:30, and the doctor starts asking me all the same questions my mom asked me in the morning, and does a bunch of blood tests to try and rule stuff out, and they still weren't entirely sure of the final diagnosis. But I seemed fine, so the doctor suggested a follow up with my pediatrician to see wtfex up with my rash. He told my mom to call if anything changed within the next couple days. (He suspected that I have either HSP or something else viral, possibly rocky mountain spotted fever, but HSP usually only happens to people age 13 and under, not 17 year olds, and Rocky mountain spotted fever usually happens to people in my area who actually gets outdoors, and my symptoms started before our outing to the museum. Pretty obscure stuff, my home skilletz)

Day 3
So the next day(Sunday) I get up, and i'm a lot sicker, and some other symtopms show up, and my fever is worse, making my mom think I may be having asymptomatic viral meningitis , and so we go to the ER (I was so tired and keeling over it was hard for me). Anyway, The triage nurse was giving my mom crap because I wasn't having typical symptoms of meningitis, and said that If i had meningitis i would be dead by now, and he was all "What are the symptoms of meningtis ma'am", totally undermineing her authority as a physician, she got really pissed off. And there was blah blah blah. So they did another urine test and another blood test, and my tests were only slightly different than the day before (lower WBC[white blood cell count], which was 3400 the day before but then was 3300, lower blood platelets, and stuff, signs of something viral). Anyway, after those tests they were all like, "Ok, if we're going to try to rule out meningitis with a Spinal Tap we might as well give her the antibiotics for it" so they gave me the IV for the meningitis medication. Then they gave me the Spinal Tap. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be. It was all weird because the doctor was having trouble finding the right lumbar to puncture, and his squishing and prodding the area around my spine was actually more discomforting than the Spinal Tap itself. They were planning on getting the tap from me sitting up but they couldn't, so I had to be on my side during the whole process. Did I mention They made me sit in the fetal position for this entire process (the squishing, the anesthetic, and the tap)?


So they finally find the spot stick a needle into my spine, a thin one (assumed form the feeling, I didn't actually see the needle), and It was a numbing agent, which only hurt a little bit. After that i actually didn't feel much pain at all, even during the spinal tap. (Although, once the numbing agent wore off, my back hurt a lot, and actually still hurts a lot as I'm writing this). Anyway, they did more blood tests as a baseline for my later follow-ups, and also test the CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) for anything. So, good news was I didn't have meningitis. The only thing they couldn't rule out was Rocky-Mountain-Spotted-Fever. They put me on the antibiotic for that to be on the safe side, and now i have a follow-up with my pediatrician on wednesday (instead of today).

Day 4(today):
So now my back is in pain, and in order to increase circulation to my brain and remake the cerebrospinal fluid, I need to sleep flat for a few days, meaning on my back and without a pillow. And eat lots of yogurt(ewww!) and drink lots of fluid. So anyway, My back hurts, and stuff, and I have trouble walking quickily or unning downstairs without being in a lot of pain, but you'll never beleive what happened at lunch today after I took a shower and my mom watched Mr. Bean's Holiday.

Yah, so leik, I was eating lunch, and my mom asked if i wanted some baby carrots, and I was like "HECK YAH THAT'S MY FAVE VEGETABLE MAMA".
So she got the container out of the fridge and was pouring the carrots into a bowl. There was a glass (the kinda i use to drink milk out of). So my mom's hand accidently touched the glass and it went all "CRASH". Mind you, it didn't crash onto the floor, it just kinda exploded. Like, spontaneous combustion. My current theory is that when my mom was cooking a hlaf an hour earlier, the glass was still right next to the stove. So that time she was cooking before exposed the glass to heat for a steady and long period of time, So much that the molecular integrity of the glass was jeopardized. So even after having cooled down for a half hour, the structural integrity was so affected that that slight touch sent peices of glass falling everywhere (spontaneous "Crumbling" as my mom says, as the glass sort of did crumble like a cookie in milk, except a lot fast and it was "pkshhsa"[my rendition of the crash sound]).

I have no intention of testing my theory, due to the cost and risk involved and my lack of passion for dealing with shards of broken glass. Although if anyone else would like to test my theory, feel free to do so.

Anyway, after starting the RMSF antibiotics, My symptoms are subsiding and my rash is fading, So i assume i actually did have Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
So seriously, this years serious medical issue is an obscure (to someone with m indoor-centered behaviors) disease. So yeah. I mean, It's not like i wasn't expecting SOMETHING. Around late sring till mid summer is prime time each year for me to have some ridiculous medical problem. And the funny thing is that they're all completely unrealted problems. In the past I've had Bronchitis, Gastroenteritis (twice), suspected cyst(that turned out to be my first ovulation, which was unexpectedly so painful I needed the same painkillers they give to heart bypass patients), asthma attacks, allergic reactions, and even skin condition one fall actually. At least one issue occurs at an almost annual rate since the age of 5, and I even had some stuff before (tear duct surgery, jondice right after birth, atopic dermatitis). So yeah, I would be surprised if something DIDN'T happen this year.

So, it's been really rough but exciting.

Anyone wanna place a wager on tomorrow's intresting event? Snowball in a North American August? A mob of cats attacking my door? Swine Flu?

bahahaha


PS- For Those of you not aware of this yet, I'm moving back to Maryland at the end of august. Kthnxbai.