Health

Last week I felt quite ill so I went to PrimaCare and was diagnosed with bronchitis and sinusitis. I was prescribed azithromyicin in the form of a z-pac for five days.

Yesterday, two days after I stopped taking the antibiotics, I had an extremely sharp pain in the lower-right quadrant of my abdomen accompanied by nausea. At first I thought it was major menstrual cramping but as it intensified I began to wonder if I was miscarrying or in the throes of an ectopic pregnancy, to the point that I was ready to go to the emergency room. About an hour and a half later the pain stopped suddenly and I was left feeling tender in that region and exhausted. I got out of bed and went about my evening, albeit taking life much easier and slower than I normally would have.

Several hours after that the pain came back, only this time it was my entire abdomen. I laid down again and told David that I'd give it an hour and then I was going to the ER. He mentioned that several years ago a friend of his took that same antibiotic and had reacted to it in a way that mirrored my own. I went to the ever-trusty internet and looked up side-effects of azithromyicin and lo and behold, there were my symptoms, in all of their gory detail.

Apparently this antibiotic is strong enough that it kills everything inside of you that it comes into contact with, including the bacteria or whatever that lives in your body to help you digest food. So none of the food I had eaten for a few days had digested properly, which left me sweating and shaking in my bed, with pain so intense that was eerily reminiscent of giving birth.

Today I awoke feeling much better, if slightly cautious about what I was willing to eat. However, all of proved indifferent because after my shower as I was putting on my underwear I threw out my back. (I've only done that one other time in my life [several years ago] when I was putting a pillow-case on a pillow.) So in about two hours, four of my family members will be invading my house and my intestines are all kinds of screwed up and I can barely walk because of my back. Good times.

This may end up being the longest weekend ever.