For the month of November I was participating (at least attempting to participate) in NaBloPoMo – National Blog Posting Month (I signed up for but was unable to do NaNoWriMo or NaNoReMo, dang it!) and I was sick as a dog, so I didn’t post over here hardly at all. I considered just closing the journal completely, then Holidailies came around again, and I thought, well, just one more month. Maybe I’ll kill the journal next year.

Anyway, if there is anyone out there who reads this sad, neglected journal and not the blog, here’s a not-so-brief update of what happended during the month of November:

I was sick. For pretty much the entire month. I actually started getting sick the end of October, but I didn’t realize I was really, really sick until the end of that week. You see, sometimes when I have salad after not having salad for a long time, I get, well, the runs. (TMI, I know, and I apologize, but it’s important to the story, trust me. ) Anyway, both Monday (10/29) and Tuesday (10/30) evenings I had a salad and chicken breast for dinner and both nights (and the following mornings) I had the runs. Because this has happened before, I didn’t think anything of it. On Halloween morning the problem was still present so I took a dose on Imodium because A) it was Halloween and I didn’t want to miss it, as we can put on quite a show here at work, and B) my costume (the theme was late-1800s/Victorian era) included a long, very full skirt that would’ve been difficult to deal with in the bathroom, if you know what I mean. I felt a little icky that night (which I attributed to the fact that I would be getting my period soon), but went to the gym anyway, and, by the way, had a fantastic work out. By the time I got home, however, I was feeling really cruddy, and didn’t even bother having dinner. I just watched “Kid Nation” (my current guilty pleasure), and went to bed.

Thursday November 1st I went to work and probably shouldn’t have. I felt okay, but not really great. By the middle of the afternoon I was freezing to death. Literally shivering uncontrollably even though I was wearing my jacket and I could feel intense heat flowing out of the top of my head. I’m sure you could see heat waves if you looked. The Director of Civil Operations even came by and said I looked a bit flush and even my eyes looked a little bloodshot. I figured I was coming down with something. No big deal. Just a little flu or something. I went home that night, took a hot shower which took the chills away, watched a little televsion and went to bed.

Friday morning, November 2nd, I woke up sweating, my eyeballs hurt when I moved them, and I couldn’t see*. Now, when I say I couldn’t see, what I mean is that everything was blurry. I could make out shapes and colours, but no details. I could tell this blob was the television and that blob was a coffee table, but I couldn’t make out what was happening on the television or what was sitting on the coffee table. Reading was impossible; the words became little squiggly lines before my eyes. When I tried to look in the mirror, I could see my eyes were bright red and swollen. I called in sick, then called a doctor.

I ended up going to a local clinic as a walk-in patient, as my regular doctor is a gynocologist, and doesn’t treat flus, or whatever it was I had. The doctor I ended up seeing I didn’t like and still don’t like and swear to GOD I will never go to again. I explained my upset tummy situation and told him how my eyes hurt and my vision was blurry.  He immediatley – and it is really hurtful and embarrassing to admit this, but – focused on my weight. He brushed off the diarreah to a bacterial infection which I’d made worse by taking the immodium (because this apparently kept the infection inside rather than letting my body do its job and flush the infection out), and gave me a prescription for some massive antibiotics, then sent me off to have tons of blood work done – not to identify the infeciton, but for my “obesity”. That’s what he wrote on the work order: Obesity. Now, I know I’m fat, but damn, I’m really not THAT bad! And, yes I need to have my cholesterol and glucose chekced, but that wasn’t what was wrong with my eyes. All I really cared about was my eyes. He didn’t even look at my eyes.

So for the next five days I took the antibiotics twice a day. They were horrible ginormous horse pills that made me sicker than the infection itself had, and while I tried to go to work, I only made it a couple half days, then gave up. Heck, I couldn’t see, had to wear dark glasses to hide my glowing red eyes, and really didn’t feel well. I probably should’ve just taken the whole time off, but I just have too hard a time doing that. I have to at least TRY to go to work. TRY to do my job.

Thursday after finishing the antibiotics, my eyes were less red, but my vision was only a little better (I could read the paper with reading glasses for about 10 or fifteen minutes before I had to stop and rest my eyes), so I went back to the doctor. When I took off my glasses, he was shocked at the state of my eyes. Shocked!

“They look terrible!” he exclaimed.

“They’re better than they were last Friday,” I told him. “Everyone has told me so.”

But (again) he didn’t listen to me; he ran off to get my blood test results from the previous week. My glucose was elevated (121, which is high, yes, but not, I repeat NOT indicitive of diabetes, it’s just that earlier this year it was 100.), and he said, “Ah HA! I KNEW it!” Then promptly sent me off for a sugar tolerance test, convinced I was diabetic, and that’s what was wrong with my eyes.

Now, I don’t know much about diabetes. I have a friend with diabetes, and there have been some distant relatives with diabetes, but I personally have no experience with it. That said, I’m pretty confident when I say that not only does diabetes not happen overnight, but vision problems caused by diabetes don’t happen overnight. These things take time. They have red-flag signals that tell you something is wrong; singals you notice sooner. I have had no signs or symptoms of anything, and up until October 31st, I felt fantastic – strong and full of energy, with perfectly working eyeballs.

I suppose I should mention that while the doctor sent me off for more unnecessary (in my opinion, anyway) blood tests (why he didn’t request a test to determine whateveritwas I had in the first place, I’ll never know), he did put in an emergency consultation with an opthamalogist to examine my eyes. Then he gave me a prescription for eye drops. Antihistimine eye drops. For allergies. Which I did not have. Gah.

A couple days later I returned and saw a Physician’s Assistant to go over my blood test results. Him I liked. He looked at my eyes. He listened when I described my previous and continuing symptoms, and he recognized that my eye problems were not allergy in nature, but an infection. Finally! Someone who looked at me at a patient with a problem, not just a fat person! Hooray! I felt so much better it didn’t even matter than my sugar tolerance test wasn’t back yet. I felt vindicated, and it was wonderful!

I saw the eye doctor November 13th, and he diagnosed a profound case of uveitis (the same thing the P.A. had mentioned the day before), or inflammation in the eye. He prescribed some Prednisolone eye drops which I’ve been taking religiously ever since. First, every two hours, then every three hours, and now I’m down to every four hours. My close-up vision is nearly back to normal now, but my distance vision is still really blurry – I mentioned it the last time I was in for my follow-up (I go in once a week to have my pressure checked, as the drops can cause glaucoma), and the doctor said my vision was distorted because of the inflammation stretching the lens out, and it should return to normal as the inflammation receeds. The whites of my eyes are all white now, and my life has been slowly returning to normal.

I have also been able to return to the gym the last couple weeks, although I’m not in as good of shape as I was the end of October. It feels really good to be back working out, though! My strength and endurance is slowing coming back, and while it’s frustrating to not be able to just jump right back into my life, I’m so incredibly grateful that I am recovering so well, and am able to resume my normal activities!

So, NaBloPoMo, NaNoWriMo and NaNoReMo didn’t go as well as I’d hoped last month (although I did post on my blog quite a bit), but I have high hopes for Holidailies! There will be a Year in Review entry, maybe a couple Christmas memes, my annual Christmas letter and stamped Christmas card, New Year’s Resolutions, and even a few photos.

Happy Holidailies, everyone! Enjoy!

*And on top of all that, I got my period. Oh joy.