No, No, No...
Tuesday, 19 May 2015 15:54![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_phil_physicsWe've been in a ping-pong cycle, changing the heat pump from Heat to AC and back every few days. Welcome to West Michigan. A week ago Sunday, 10 May 2015, we were coming off of some 80s, so we hadn't yet switched the heat back on, despite the dropping temps. I found myself shivering a bit. As I am unnaturally (for me) sensitive to the cold under the meds I've had for two years now, I didn't think much of it. I put on a lap blanket and felt fine.
During the late night writing, however, at one point I realized I felt a little flushed in the face. Uh-oh. Shivering? Then feeling hot? I broke out the digital thermometer and got 100.2°F. Repeated and it read 100.0°F.
Grrr...
Not another Curse of May, was it? May 2013 I got sick and was hospitalized for 5½ months. May 2014, while at WisCon, my foot took a turn for the worse and I was hospitalized again and have been on antibiotics ever since.
So I called Infectious Diseases in the morning. Temp was down, but the edema in my left leg was swollen and reddened -- this has happened when I've gotten a cellulitis infection. Great. They had me go to the lab on Tuesday and get blood drawn for a blood culture. Actually, a blood culture ×2, samples from each arm to minimize errors of contamination. 24 hours for a first result, 72 hours plus for definitive. Also schedule an appointment with my GP. That was set up for yesterday, Monday 18 May.
Panic mode, right? End of the world? Eh, not quite. See, I had something similar happen in December, where I briefly spiked a fever and my leg swelled and reddened, but it went away -- the swelling taking a couple of weeks to come down. Indeed, after that round the healing of my heel really took off. This was looking like that.
But... in response to that fever I started taking and recording my temperature every morning. I usually am subnormal, so any fever is likely to be readily apparent. Once we started in on this round, I would take my temperature several times a day:
Note that the digital thermometer's accuracy is not as good as its display. At somewhere around ±0.3°F to 0.5°F, the error bars wipe out a lot of the variations. The sheet with the data after Monday after noon was across the room and I didn't bother to get it, but the trend is back towards "normal" for me, not going up.
The right side of the graph, is a little noisy, in part because the left side is mornings only, so I reduced the data set to the 2am fever spike and first morning readings only, when I almost always run subnormal (98.6°F):
The lines were fitted automatically by Excel -- I've not vetted them.
Yesterday at 12:30 Infectious Diseases called and said the blood culture was completely negative -- no growth reported. My doctor looked at my leg, poked at it and it was soft not hard (which is good) and much like December, we could neither come up with a concrete reason for origin or concern. It "may" be in both cases that a pocket of fluid in my foot make have broken free, as there was more fluid in the bandages both times -- and that once free, something thought I AM GOING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD, only to be smacked down by the antibiotics, which said NO.
Just a few days before I had my minor fever spike -- my doctor said that as far as he was concerned, 100°F once really didn't qualify as much of a fever -- I had done a repeat of my regular bloodwork and all the values continue to look good. We added a hardboiled egg to my lunch in December to up the protein and the protein level is now up to par.
Bottom line, it doesn't look like anything to worry about and not yet The Curse of May 2015...
BTW, this is the first time I did graphs in Excel 2010. And it's different than Excel 95/97/2003. Ultimately, it is probably easier in 2010, but the differences allow me to shake my cane(s) and rant about how Microsoft keeps changing things! (evil-grin) Since I didn't want to waste any more time on the graphs, these are just screenshots cropped and resized in Paint.
Dr. Phil
During the late night writing, however, at one point I realized I felt a little flushed in the face. Uh-oh. Shivering? Then feeling hot? I broke out the digital thermometer and got 100.2°F. Repeated and it read 100.0°F.
Grrr...
Not another Curse of May, was it? May 2013 I got sick and was hospitalized for 5½ months. May 2014, while at WisCon, my foot took a turn for the worse and I was hospitalized again and have been on antibiotics ever since.
So I called Infectious Diseases in the morning. Temp was down, but the edema in my left leg was swollen and reddened -- this has happened when I've gotten a cellulitis infection. Great. They had me go to the lab on Tuesday and get blood drawn for a blood culture. Actually, a blood culture ×2, samples from each arm to minimize errors of contamination. 24 hours for a first result, 72 hours plus for definitive. Also schedule an appointment with my GP. That was set up for yesterday, Monday 18 May.
Panic mode, right? End of the world? Eh, not quite. See, I had something similar happen in December, where I briefly spiked a fever and my leg swelled and reddened, but it went away -- the swelling taking a couple of weeks to come down. Indeed, after that round the healing of my heel really took off. This was looking like that.
But... in response to that fever I started taking and recording my temperature every morning. I usually am subnormal, so any fever is likely to be readily apparent. Once we started in on this round, I would take my temperature several times a day:
Note that the digital thermometer's accuracy is not as good as its display. At somewhere around ±0.3°F to 0.5°F, the error bars wipe out a lot of the variations. The sheet with the data after Monday after noon was across the room and I didn't bother to get it, but the trend is back towards "normal" for me, not going up.
The right side of the graph, is a little noisy, in part because the left side is mornings only, so I reduced the data set to the 2am fever spike and first morning readings only, when I almost always run subnormal (98.6°F):
The lines were fitted automatically by Excel -- I've not vetted them.
Yesterday at 12:30 Infectious Diseases called and said the blood culture was completely negative -- no growth reported. My doctor looked at my leg, poked at it and it was soft not hard (which is good) and much like December, we could neither come up with a concrete reason for origin or concern. It "may" be in both cases that a pocket of fluid in my foot make have broken free, as there was more fluid in the bandages both times -- and that once free, something thought I AM GOING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD, only to be smacked down by the antibiotics, which said NO.
Just a few days before I had my minor fever spike -- my doctor said that as far as he was concerned, 100°F once really didn't qualify as much of a fever -- I had done a repeat of my regular bloodwork and all the values continue to look good. We added a hardboiled egg to my lunch in December to up the protein and the protein level is now up to par.
Bottom line, it doesn't look like anything to worry about and not yet The Curse of May 2015...
BTW, this is the first time I did graphs in Excel 2010. And it's different than Excel 95/97/2003. Ultimately, it is probably easier in 2010, but the differences allow me to shake my cane(s) and rant about how Microsoft keeps changing things! (evil-grin) Since I didn't want to waste any more time on the graphs, these are just screenshots cropped and resized in Paint.
Dr. Phil
Posted on Dreamwidth Crossposted on LiveJournal
