Posts Tagged ‘health’

Since I haven’t mentioned this in here yet…

As many of us thought (and feared) would happen, Roe v Wade was overruled, and abortion is no longer a constitutional right in the United States. Living in Texas, most of you can guess what our state governor thinks about that… although the current law, and trigger laws, still allow me to get an abortion if I get pregnant again — another pregnancy would risk “the life of the mother”, or my life, since my epilepsy is now that severe and I have periods in which I go apneic during my sleep for as little as a few seconds or as long as thirty to forty-five seconds (waking up from that is not fun because it feels like I’ve just got done running a sprint). If I get pregnant again and attempt to stay pregnant, the chances of me dying in my sleep from a nocturnal seizure are more than 30%… and I mean, they were never low to begin with, but research into nocturnal epilepsy as it relates to pregnancy has indicated that the two do not bode well together and it’s not something that I am ever going to attempt to chance. I think I’m going to discuss sterilization with my OB/GYN at my next Depo-Provera appointment and see what, if anything, I have to do to get the ball rolling on getting my tubes tied — the thing that was holding me back on that was, and is, the fact that I am immunosuppressed from the prednisone usage that I am still trying to stop, and no one wants to risk a keyhole infection that is likely going to be Staph. However, with the political climate, that risk is acceptable.

So many Republicans in this state are already chastising women about how they should “make better decisions” and “have self-control”, and it makes me so badly want to mention something here in this blog that some of you already know about, but I’ll get to that in time. (Let’s just say that I check my tracker.)

This is “never again becoming an option” fast.

I am still on prednisone because it could take up to a week for all remnants of Bactrim to leave my body, and when you’ve become badly allergic to the thing that you had to take… yeah. And I continue to take Benadryl as needed to decrease the likelihood that I continue to manifest allergic symptoms to this thing. Next week is shaping up to be a very fun week. The medication that caused this, that I don’t want to take any more, is the medication that I need to stop the effects of this because my immune system has recognized the Thing I Need as the Thing I’m Allergic To and decided to ramp shit up even worse. Somehow I actually expected this.

I can’t wait to be off of prednisone once this is done and over with and just stay off of it. Seriously…

Me: 0, Bactrim: not 0, is anyone really surprised?

Well, I am no longer allowed to take Bactrim for… well, any reason.

Prior to this, it was listed as a moderate allergy in my medical records because all it had caused was a headache and severe dryness of my nose and throat after my dose had to be raised adjusting for my weight as a child. Because this was so early in the process of taking it for an ear infection, I was taken off of it, put on something that I wasn’t allergic to and the allergy to it was noted in my files. However, since the Staph infection that I happened to… get on my skin was MRSA and I have a history of being immunocompromised, I told the local hospital that I would be willing to try Bactrim since it was the best suited for the problem that I had. I took every single dose of it with Benadryl as directed, but the headaches became severe migraines (which I had to medicate), and by the end of it, I had an antibiotic rash all over my face, chest, and upper stomach. For most antibiotics, late-onset rashes aren’t that big of a deal and you can finish the thing anyway without having to worry about an allergy. But in a history of someone already allergic to it — and it being a sulfa-based drug, meaning that antibiotic rashes at any stage in treatment are bad — this was… not good. At any rate, it then snowballed from there, and I got chills and a fever from the antibiotic. Putting myself back on prednisone out of sheer necessity at this point lowered the fever and reduced the rash, and forty-eight hours after that point I began to feel better. However, getting over something like this can take up to a full week for you to do, and now that I know that I am severely allergic to Bactrim this is what I expect.

Now I just have to see if this infection is actually gone, and these wounds actually heal, for our next trick.

Since I haven’t addressed this in here yet.

I had to go to the local hospital on Sunday to get IV antibiotics because, having been on prednisone when Bub pinched my arm in several locations during meltdowns, those pinch marks became infected with Staph since they had broken the skin. The precipitating event was that, in spite of fastidious cleanliness, it managed to jump to the left side of my body where it rapidly moved each day for three days. Urgent care didn’t feel like they could adequately treat that… level of infection, so I was sent to the local hospital. After waiting for several hours, which I expected but found no more entertaining, I was eventually called back, gave several vials of blood to check for different things, and their determination was the same as mine — Staph infection (especially because I have a prior history of opportunistic Staph infections of the skin), and they were going to defer to urgent care’s recommendation that I receive IV antibiotics. Their goal was to bridge me to oral antibiotics as soon as possible, but given the severity of this, I had to be given a medication that I’m allergic to because the allergy is not severe or anaphylactic. I just take Benadryl along with it and report anything more than “a mild to moderate inconvenience” to my care team. Worst case, I head back up to the local hospital. So far I am managing to strag along just itching, which I will gladly accept in light of…

Prednisone hates me and still clearly hates me.

I’ve seen the doctor once for this and I was prescribed antibiotic gel to put on the wound at dressing changes, but… that isn’t actually going well, so I will probably have to see the doctor again for the wounds that Bub gave me on my right arm pinching me while having meltdowns, because apparently he broke skin and now it is infected. I also have a few other surface-level Staph infections on random places on my skin that continue to be and stay bandaged and are hidden by clothes, but I’ve been off of prednisone long enough to be able to get my booster COVID-19 shot (finally!). I think at the end of the day, prednisone has broken me as I’ve referenced several times already in here. I wouldn’t have taken it again if my primary care doctor and pulmonologist didn’t tell me to continue the burst and taper that I had been prescribed due to a worsening of asthma symptoms. And on top of that, I feel like I should have held out for the J&J booster rather than get the Pfizer booster recommended by the pharmacy because I actually feel sick, not just “feel sick” like you do when you get immunized and your body is beginning to make antibodies to fight actual contact of the virus with should the need ever arise (as it likely will during, well, a pandemic of all things).

Either that or I should have waited longer than I did to get re-vaccinated even if I waited “long enough”…

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