Home again and then some

I returned home on June 30th and have spent all this time recovering from the nightmare of symptoms I brought home with me.

On July 1st I ended up visiting the emergency department of Centennary Hospital to complain about my extremely painful headache and neck pain.  Symptoms of my stomach flu had abated.  Both the fever, listlessness, headaches, photophobia, sensitivity to noise and general achiness had combined to give the impression that there was more going on with me than just an exacerbation of a migraine and a stomach bug.  Meningitis was the first guess for the doctors in England.  A CT scan and then a lumbar puncture prove this to be wrong.

What I came home with, then, was a massive migraine and the subsequent pain of having neck, shoulder and cranial muscles which had gotten a work out that they could not recover from.  I needed pain killers to help me get through the day and and muscle relaxants to help my muscles revert to their normal state.

The emergency room doctor gave me migraine medications and then, when that didn't work, morphine.  I was sent home with a referral to a neurologist and narcotic pain killers.

I saw the neurologist the next day: a stroke of luck as they had cancellation.  The neurologist, a weird bird who made little to no eye contact and misread my information thinking I had had meningitis, prescribed Percocets (40 no less) for the pain.  And a requisition for an MRI.

The following day, not trusting entirely in the neurologists 3 minute assessment, I followed up with my GP.  The GP, whom I totally trust, told me to stop the Percocets and put me on steroidal meds to decrease my muscle inflammation and Pregabalin to reduce my sensitivity to pain.  The pregabalin, from what I can gather, coats nerve cells and reduces their ability to communicate with each other.  In my case, I think I had become oversensitive to pain or even the anticipation of the pain I would experience.  Not sure if this make scientific sense...but it's my sense of what was going on:  I needed my muscles to relax enough to recover, I needed to reduce muscle inflammation and the GP rightly added, something to take the edge off.

So it's been two days of being on this regimen of steroid and neuropathic analgesics to set my back on even keel.  I have never, ever experienced anything like this.  I did not even know that I had more than an occasional migraine (once every six months).

I have spent most of my days back in Toronto lying around the house, hiding from sudden changes in light and walking gingerly from one spot to another.  I have, thankfully, gotten better each day and am contemplating going out to do some gardening tomorrow.

My sister in England, in the meantime, has been moved to her hometown's hospital as was her husband much earlier.  They are both reported to be doing well.  She is out of ICU and able to communicate fairly well.  She still has a tracheostomy in place and so cannot talk.  Otherwise making slow, measurable progress.

And that is what I have today in the way of updates.