Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Meningococcal Part 2

I was told to curl up in the fetal position so a doctor could perform a lumber puncture. It involves sticking a needle into your lower back to drain spinal fluids. For these fluids are where the Meningococcal live and breed! So it had to be tested. The whole experience wasn't painful at all, It was just annoying be curled up in a ball for so long while feeling nauseous and having the worst headache of your life. As the doctor was draining the fluids he said to me "Well, the fluids are really clear, this is a good sign. Usually they would be a cloudy colour from the infection." However, this still needed to be sent to pathology to be tested for the bacteria, so we had to wait an hour for the results. I can't remember much of that hour, come to think of it, I can't remember much after the results came back saying that I had Meningococcal. I remember not being that worried because I the doctor said we had caught it early and that they were going to put me straight onto a penicillin drip. I'll insert a picture of my funky penicillin friend here.



This is actually Benzylpenicillin, note the Benzene ring on the left of the molecule. Anyway, all that happened after the diagnosis was that the started giving me that intravenously and I got better.
I was put in an ICU room by myself and the nurses had to wear masks to make sure they didn't get my stupid illness. After about 3 days I think I got moved into a room in the childrens ward. All the nurses were super and did WAY more then the doctors. Doctors are all talk and don't do any work. They just work hard in uni and think they're all that and a bag of potato chips, but nurses are awesomely better. Nurses FTW, Lolz!
But there was one nurse that resented me for being in the children's ward and kept telling me "You're very luck to have your own room, the other ward is being renovated and you get to stay here"

I called her Nurse Ratched behind her back, I thought I was super funny.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Meningococcal Part 1

Okay, I've decided to tell the story of how I got Meningococcal and what that was like. Most of the people reading this probably have already been told the story of how I got it and what it was like and what went on but I want to test out this new keyboard I got (It's a Apple Wireless one and it's a pain in the arse to connect to my laptop, nice to type on, but otherwise I would suggest getting one with a cable, because not everything needs to be wireless, you fucks). I will start at the very beginning, as in where I (suspect) I contracted this disease.
I'd gone with Anne-Marie to Sydney for New Years Eve (That's another story for another time) and we went to this club, see, and I was pretty drunk. I though it would help me forget that I wasn't having much fun. I ended up engaging in a make out session with a girl (who I later found out was a nurse). I've my hypothesis is correct then this is when I probably ingested the bacteria. However, Meningococcal is a disease that can lay dormant in people, living up inside your nose, like tiny nose gnomes, And it can just spread into your brain and the rest of your body from there. So either I had it for ages and it just set in, or I got it from kissing a girl who had it laying dormant in her. Either way it was in me, and It wished to destroy me.

After I got back from Sydney, I think it was like a week after, I had a really sore throat and stayed in bed for the day. That night I tried to sleep but I felt terrible. I was just tossing and turning in my bed and couldn't get to sleep. My sore throat had gone but my head hurt pretty bad, like some head gnomes were mining for brain juice inside my head. I took some pain killers but that didn't do squat. My parents and sister had gone to Coffs for the day so I had no one to ask for assistance. I decided that the reason I couldn't get to sleep was because my bed was feeling strange, So I tried to sleep out on a mattress in the lounge room. I did manage to fall asleep only to keep having these strange dreams about guns being taken apart by old people and dropped through chute. Once I was awoken by this dream whenever I shut my eyes to get back to sleep I'd just see these old people dismantling guns and putting them done this chute. I was in so much pain by now that I didn't really think about how absurd it was, I just wanted to sleep. The head gnomes boss was angry because the gnomes weren't meeting there quota of brain juice and they weren't bringing in gnomely sized piles of cash. So evidently they shifted there production into overdrive.
I began to actually want to see a doctor when I developed a rash. And, I shit you not, I immediately thought "This seems like Meningococcal". I tried to search for it on the internet but I couldn't spell it. I started to worry a bit and called my parents mobile, they were about 10 minutes away from Armidale. After they arrived they called a doctor that was on call so he could met us at the hospital, rather than having to sit around and wait ages.

The ride to the hospital was pretty awful, we just got a new car that had pretty firm suspension. So ever bump shock my brain around and caused me even more pain. We got to the hospital and we went in and sat in the waiting room, it was only about 15 minutes until the nurse took me into triage. She took down my symptoms and looked at my rash (little red dots all over my body) and then the doctor came in and upon seeing nor real signs of anything serious, told me to take to strong pain killers and go home. Both my parents and I said "We think it's Meningococcal" but my red dots all over my skin weren't red enough or some shit. He simply told us to come back if it go any worse. I'm not mad at him or anything, it's pretty big deal to tell with 100% accuracy whether you have Meningococcal or not, and I'll get into that in a minute.

So we went home, I took the meds he gave me, lay in bed for an hour with my mum sitting on the end of the bed, and I just felt even worse. Mum called the nurses and they suggested a shower, but I almost passed out walking over to the shower so we decided to go back to the hospital. This is when, on top of the tremendous headache, sore neck and almost complete exhaustion from lack of sleep, I started to feel nauseous as well. So we got back to the hospital after one of the longest and most painful car journeys of my life and the nurse took me straight in and put me on a bed. She tried asking me questions but all I could really get out was that my head hurt. The doctor in the ER that night had seen me along with the doctor on call that came in. The nurse told me that the doctor couldn't come and see me just yet because, and I quote, "He is just finishing up some paper work" I couldn't believe it, but I was too sick to do anything except throw up, which I did. The doctor that was there was a strange man with big hair and he was just wearing one of those shirts you get from KMart or Target with the squiggly graffiti-esque writing on them, because dat shit is tigggght, bra. He had a look at me and said things like "Hmmm, so he has been feeling nauseous now too?" and "Hmmmm, okay."
Then finally he come into the room after a nurse had given me a muscle relaxant to try and ease the pain. He told me that the only way to tell for sure whether this was Meningococcal or not was to do a lumber puncture (oh yeah, the doctors had finally caught up to my diagnostic skills and decided it may be Meningococcal). Now, the only thing I've heard about lumber punctures is that when my mum was watching one being performed when she was doing work experience as a nurse when she was a kid, she had passed out from shock. So It's safe to say I was pretty worried.

Anyway, that'll do for part one. I'm tired and reliving the events like this is kind of crappy, which is odd.