I knew my next hospital admission was lurking somewhere in the future, but I didn’t expect it to be this bloody soon.
I arrived home from Gatwick feeling pretty damn ropey, but the obvious culprit seemed to be the 11 hour flight. The next day I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a car, and unfortunately I have previous experience of that for comparison. My temperature was 38.5 so I took a bit of paracetamol, but an hour later it had climbed to 38.8 and I felt like that car had reversed back over me.
I went through the usual drill: called haematology, they admitted me, and initiated treatment for neutropenic sepsis. Given my recent travels I was moved to an isolation room on an infectious diseases ward; my temperature rose to 39.1, my BP plummeted to 62/40, and an extremely angry looking (but completely painless) rash crept over me. Loads of exciting swabs and blood samples were taken over 7 cannulation attempts and 2 femoral stabs, but I avoided another lumbar puncture (I think because I was very vocal about my headache from last time). So far the only thing grown was enterovirus in my throat which isn’t particularly interesting or significant, but the tests for all the exotic diseases take time to do. Initially the working diagnosis was dengue fever, but now chikungunya virus (no, I’d never heard of it either!) seems a lot more likely given how my rash has evolved.
I’m home now, just feeling like I’ve been beaten up, and marvelling at the souvenir I brought home.
Love Emily x
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