Clodfobble |
10-22-2015 11:34 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by tw
Did you discuss this somewhere? I don't know anyone who got West Nile. And do not know about the experience (how one knows, what symptoms are like, what is involve in treatment).
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The symptomatic result was meningitis. Typical appearance: a little fatigue, stiff neck, severely debilitating headache. After two primary physicians gave me painkillers and muscle relaxers, I ended up in the ER for the pain where they gave me a spinal tap "just to be sure."
The tech said, "You can see the fluid coming out is pretty clear, so I doubt it's meningitis..." Then they left the room to do the test, and when they came back everyone was wearing masks. And he said, "So, you can probably imagine why we're wearing these now..."
The white blood cell count was so high, they figured it couldn't be anything but bacterial, but on the other hand, "if it were bacterial you should be dead by now." After about 24 hours they confirmed it was viral (of some kind), and stopped the IV antibiotics, but continued testing the sample further because the symptoms were so severe. On I think the third day of hospitalization some new doctor came in to let me know that they'd confirmed it was West Nile, and were reporting that to the CDC as required, but since I was almost better by then (well, better enough to go home anyway) it was a formality at that point.
After getting off the morphine IV and going home, I had to stay on the hydrocodone pills for I think a week, and then regular ibuprofen for maybe another three weeks after that.
I had been camping in the Texas woods the week before all this happened, so they assume it was transmitted from a mosquito bite during that trip.
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