Sick as Dogs

As I mentioned in my previous post, Blaine began to get really sick while we were in Idaho. His throat was killing him, and that is never a good sign with Blaine. By the time we got home, he had a fever and we both had a horrible night. I was up all night taking Blaine's temperature, giving him water, and changing our bed sheets. Yes. I had to change our sheets twice in one night. Blaine was sweating so much, that it even went through our comforter. Everything was soaked. It was horrible. I barely slept and didn't go into work the next day of how exhausted I was. Blaine had a fever in the 100s several times. Finally, around Tuesday, he started to feel better.

But of course, I had to get sick as well. As soon as I was done with all of my big papers and projects for the week, I became sick Wednesday night. I went into work on Thursday anyway because I didn't want to stay at home and let this horrible flu get the best of me. I really didn't want to be sick. I had all these plans for the week and weekend. There was this fun 5k on Saturday (Santa Run) that I had really been looking forward to. We were scheduled to take Christmas pictures on Saturday as well, among other things. Anyway, as soon as I was done at work, I went straight home and slept the rest of the day. Friday, I woke up even worse, was vomiting (dry heaving, really) and had a fever of 102. I slept all day Friday as well. Saturday, I felt slightly better after receiving a priesthood blessing from Blaine and Matt, but still had a fever and continued vomiting. It was all so horrible. Sunday, I felt decent enough to go to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. I took as much medicine as possible and had a cough drop in my mouth the entire time.

Monday I felt better. I went to work, school and even went to a job interview. I cleaned up and cooked dinner (the house was a mess since I was sick and Blaine was fending for himself for dinner every night). Tuesday was a good day as well, until I started having a piercing neck pain. It was so annoying. I took ibuprofen and applied heat to it, but nothing seemed to help. Blaine wanted me to go to the ER but I felt stupid going for neck pain. I took some coughing medicine at night (it hurt the most when I coughed) and tried to go to bed. I woke up around 3 AM because the pain was too much. We got dressed and headed to the hospital, which is right across the street (so convenient). The wait at the ER wasn't that bad, but once I was seen it took forever. They took some x-rays of my chest to make sure that there wasn't any bacterial infection. After a while, the doctor told me that I had torticollis and pleurisy. Torticollis is basically a fancy term for having muscle spasms in my neck. He said that since I've been coughing so much for so long, those muscles are just going crazy (he really said that). Pleurisy is inflammation of the lining in my lungs since they have been rubbing a lot from how much I've been coughing. Usually, this causes severe chest pain but the doctor said that in some rare cases, it causes severe neck pain on one side of the neck. The doctor prescribed me 2 medicines and bed rest for 2 days. We were home by 6:30-ish. Needless to say, we were both exhausted.

I thought that being on bed rest would drive me insane since I had so much homework to do (being that it was the last week of class). But the medicines were so strong, that I had no problem sleeping all day. I've been tired the entire time. Blaine has been really nice and supportive. He's an excellent nurse :) I'm finally feeling better today. I'm still taking some of the medicine, but not as often. I can't wait to get back on track, go to work, study for finals, pack for vacation, and run again! Today was the last day of classes. We are so close to being done! One more week of finals and we're one step closer to graduation. Hallelujah.