So after last Monday’s post, I wasn’t getting any better and was tested Tuesday for Covid and sure enough, the test came back positive. I had monoclonal antibody (Regeneron) therapy Wednesday afternoon, had a fairly uneventful evening, ate dinner, and went to bed.
Sometime that night, the fever woke me. Passive immobility, flaccid limbs that don’t respond to the body’s commands, would have been a blessing compared to immobility characterized by actively flexed, painfully rigid muscles. Unable to move, or call for help, I just got to lay there, wet the bed, and have the kind of thoughts that only a fevered brain can produce. The predominant one of those being that the fever was causing permanent brain damage and that I would be in this state forever. In case you were wondering, there’s nothing good about laying helpless while imagining your ability burning away one neuron at a time.
(Would it be too dramatic to say that’s just MS on a sped up timeline?)
Ok, enough with the horror story. We’re all sick and my wife was in a central location, so as to be able to tend to everyone better. She walked in for a periodic check, felt my head, got tylenol in me, and strategically placed ice packs around me for max cooling (we have 3 small boys, so we have lots of ice packs on hand). When the fever eased, she changed my clothes, sponge bathed me, and changed the bed while I was in it, sort of all at the same time. (Those are some of the real perks of being married to a nurse despite what nurse fan fiction would have you believe).
Anyway, the fever never came back, but left me so exhausted I slept most of Thursday and have been in slow recovery mode since.
That fever would have laid me low without MS, but my tale would have been one of staggering to the medicine cabinet for tylenol instead of laying helpless waiting for help. Right now, on my best days, I couldn’t live alone, but I don’t live alone, so it’s easy to forget my disabilities sometimes. Well, not “forget”, more like “not be forced to remember” all the time. An illness is the lemon juice in the paper cut that forces you to acknowledge its existence. My time having an invisible illness is long gone but there’s “visible” and “slapped in the face with it visible” and apparently I don’t like being slapped in the face.
I’ll be all the way better next week.
6 replies on “Fever”
You had the entire Grace family praying like mad for y’all…especially that awesome nurse you live with. I was “attacked” Sunday….HOW IS BEN!! You are well loved.
I am more blessed than I deserve, but we all are, I suppose.
So glad to hear it didn’t send you to the hospital! Continued prayers
Me too. A hospital is the last place I want to be, no matter the quality of care I might get.
Hi Ben.
Hope you keep getting better until you’re back to a lot better place. I’ve been in that position where the paralysis is very hard to take… actually many times, and always in the hospital. Not being able to move and the oppressive weight of limbs feeling, can’t control bladder or much else, and other uncomfortable and/or painful stuff depending on what caused it. Nothing to do but lay in one place ruminating what hell might come next, and waiting for someone to come move, feed, change or help me with basically everything. Feeling like this might be the final one that makes me 100% dependent for good. Scary stuff… humbling experience. I just had another this past weekend, but it was different this time. Transverse myelitis… like a MS relapse but more acute, and shorter duration after steroids. Needed the steroids—solumedrol—because ATM is massive inflammation of the spine. Doctors don’t know what caused it because no signs of infection, but it happened after my third Covid vaccination, the booster shot. I can move now, and can go to the bathroom more normally (for me), and the awful fever is gone. Hopefully it stays this way for a long, long time. I hope that for you too.
Stay well.
Thanks, as always. I’m better, although not completely back to normal, whatever that means. Do you even have a “normal” anymore?