My recent poor health makes sense

W

Warbler

At the Start
Joined
Jun 6, 2005
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Shortly into the new year I got what I thought was a virus (there were alot of strange ones about last winter). The symptoms were splitting headaches, a 50% loss energy, and a general aching all over, particularly on my limbs. Try as I might I couldn't shift this bloody thing. Every now and then I thought I was through it. But no. It was back with me a few days later. It lasted throughout January, February and most of March. I'd been puzzled by this, as I'm not a natural sicky person, but had ultimately put this lethargy down to the ageing process, but don't mind admitting to being a bit concerned as to how quickly it had seemingly taken grip of me. Basically, the drive and energy to do things I'd previously done had gone. Anyway, I'd gradually adapted to my new restricted lifestyle with a degree of anger and bitterness, and every day seemed like a struggle to simply see it out hobbling about in various degrees of pain and struggling to maintain a focus when all I wanted to do was sleep. Then one night towards the end of March the temperature rose and I decided to open the bedroom window for the first time in 2008 and duly went to sleep feeling my usual shitty self. The next day I woke and was seemingly right as rain!!! I'd shaken the virus off, and I knew it. I suddenly felt palpably fresher and a good 50% more energetic than for the previous 3 months. Thank God for that. I suddenly remembered what it was like to feel good again!!!

Anyway, on Wednesday I woke again aching all over, with a migraine and feeling completely wasted. I bumbled through the day, and was no better today. Then halfway through the morning whilst slouched on the couch, I remembered that fresh air had sorted things out last time. Now I thought this was an old wives tale, but what the hell I thought. I opened a couple of windows and set up a cross draft blow over me and gently ventilate the house. Within an hour I felt 50% better, and had enough energy I figured to venture off to the chemist to arm myself with an arsenal flu sympton remedies. I duly told the chemist what my symptons were (God the number of times I've cursed such customers who've kept me waiting on check outs whilst they regale shop assistants thus). But this is a local independent and there was no one else in the shop.

"Where does it ache most?" she enquired
"Well my head mostly. Then my wrist, and thumb (single blokes aren't normally forthcoming at offering this kind of detail you understand for fear of ridicule). Then my ankle joints, and then my calf muscles". I duly went on to explain the history of the winter and extolled the virtue of fresh air.

I returned home, and proceeded to adopted the laid out on the couch and feeling sorry for myself. However, within an hour I was 90% better and doing the gardening by lunchtime.

I duly went back out to the shops and was chased across the parade of shops by the chemist brandishing ten sheets of paper.

"How do you feel now?"
"Much better, completely mended. It's amazing I've gone from feeling like crap to perfectly healthy in space of 2 to 3 hours".
"Well" she said "you can safely assume that it wasn't a virus you had then". I looked at her quizically
"Trust me. You don't clear a virus up to that level, in that period of time, by having exposure to fresh air"


Your starter for ten then folks (if there's any aspiring GP's amongst you). What had she diagnosed? or to put it another way, what symptoms (all of which I was and had exhibited) and causes were on the sheets of paper? Or what was her next question to which I answered yes, followed by don't know, (for the seriously clever diagnostics amongst you)
 
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The two questions might have been:

1. Have you been eating, drinking and smoking too much recently?

2. Why don't you exercise more?
 
Venusian said:
The two questions might have been:

1. Have you been eating, drinking and smoking too much recently?

2. Why don't you exercise more?
Click to expand...

In which case the answer would have been No, Yes, Yes and to tired :D

It's actually moderately serious, and a salutary lesson to learn potentially, as the symptoms appear as flu symptoms and people often treat them thus whilst failing to realise the true nature and potential gravity of the situation.

More extreme symptoms include irrational thought and behaviour, hallucinations, loss of temper, anxiety, depression, inability to cope with academically demanding situations, dementia, unconsciousness and death.

Now I've also exhibited all of these at various times, but can easily attribute the cause in each case(the latter one is a technical qualification, given that I had to be resucitated by a paramedic after having stopped breathing). I didn't know this incidentally, and only found out a few days later when the poor person who had to mouth to mouth me came to introduce himself as I lay stricken in hospital :D It's only when I was told, that I realised I had no recollection of the ambulance journey, yet remember being loaded in. The next thing I remember were ceiling lights in the hospital whizzing past me as I was being rushed through various wards on a trolley at what seemed like 100mph (I was unable to move) and lobbed into some scanning tunnel.

Incidentally (for triv) the same cause of illness, has been linked to people reporting ghosts in haunted houses and proven thus. As I said, it can cause hallucinations, and the root cause can be measured.

Not Glandular Fever (thank God) which I don't believe would have been remedied so quickly by simple exposure to fresh air
 
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Sounded like Seasonal Affective Disorder at first, but after a bit of Googling (never, ever self-diagnose through Google...) I keep seeing fibromyalgia? Can't imagine such a simple 'cure' for that though.
 
Q1 Do you have a gas boiler?
Q2 Has it been serviced recently( this year)?

Papers were addresses of local CORGI fitters.

Try at Sherlock Holmes/Dr Kildare prompted by the fact that Wednesday was such a s****y day that you might have put the heating on.Therefore tying in with winter. Though could have been a duvet allergy.

Some logic anyway.
 
Mr Seul you are a genius. The exact two questions!!! Well done. Wednesday was such a shitty day (rain) it involved closing all windows and thus exposing me to low grade carbon monoxide poisioning during the night with no ventilation. The papers were some trade thingy that pharmacists are issued with where basically the symptoms that I'd described were pretty well a 100% match for what was called "acute carbon mon-oxide poisioning". In reality acute equals minor. The other category is "chronic" which where the other more serious symptoms of halluciunations, unconsciousness and death occur

The clue(s) apparently lay in the parts of the body that were aching most and the speed and nature of what was causing recovery. With my blood oxygen level reduced, my central organs were taking up the oxygen and thus ensuring that those parts of the body furthest away from the heart were getting the least. In protest at this, they started to signal it through pain (its not disimilar in principal as to how Acute Mountain Sickness works which is again based on oxygen starvation and reduced blood flow). Many cases of AMS have similar symptoms to chronic exposure, and I have more knowledge on this one. The more telling thing however, was that it only required 1-2 hours of exposure to exaggerated fresh air (I set up a cross draft, lay down right into it and started inhaling slowly and deeply etc) to recover. Previously it had happened over-night and I had no idea as this could have involved 8 hours, in reality it could have occured within an hour.
 
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Remarkable.

Dear Dr Tout Seul, I have recently been afflicted by Pyles, Boyles and Worts. Do you think they might be related?
 
Now if that perspicacity could be applied to racing analysis we wouldn't be hearing about how you've lost the plot.

Has your central heating boiler been checked lately, Tout?:p
 
I recently have been suffering from what can only be describes as, a pain in the ar*se. It generally happens about a furlong out in races, just when my horse goes a length up, i suddenly get this feeling, and soon enough, it leads to a pain in the ar*se. Symptoms include a tendancy to roll up slips of paper, financial loses, and grinding of teeth..

My doctor has told me its something to do with a July Meeting...
 
On a serious note the original symptoms sound like a condition called 'fybromyalgia' which has had the same effect on somebody dear to me recently. You may want to google it Warbs if the effects return.

(I had noticed that the average length of your posts had declined to 987 words, so its good to have you helathy again.)
 
I struggle to sleep without a window open - no matter the weather. Quality of sleeping apart, I find that without a window open I struggle to breathe and I wake up with a niggling headache also.

Actually at the moment I'm struggling very much with my breathing - my GP will love it, he's been hassling me ever since I moved back to the UK (over a year now!) to go on a regular medication for asthma and keep it treated. He actually smirked when I told him a couple of weeks ago that yes, I would take up the asthma clinic appointment the practice nurse suggested on my GPs advice! It's got a lot worse lately - it's always been fairly mild but I've been finding myself struggling to breathe probably 5 days out of 7 for a few weeks now so having to overdose on the ventolin (as told to me by a nurse at an asthma clinic - she told me to take as much as I needed and to ignore the warnings to only take two puffs at a time), I can't work out whether the difficulties I'm having at the moment are down to the persistent nasty cough I've had lately, hay fever, pollution, the drugs I'm on, stress, or something else!

At least you've worked out the cause of it - I spend hours every day changing my mind as to why it perpetually feels like some fat bastard is sitting on my chest!!!

As an aside, for anyone suffering migraines - go to your GP and ask for a triptan. I'm on zolmitriptan 5mg for migraines - a dose taken on initially realising a migraine is coming. It is frankly amazing - for half an hour or so you think nothing is happening then suddenly it kicks in, it all lifts, and an enormous sense of euphoria kicks in as a result of the pain and pressure lifting so suddenly and so completely. Your body gradually gets used to the medication though, even if you tale it infrequently (I take it on average maybe once a month) so I have been increased from the standard 2.5mg dose to the 5mg dose, but it is spectacularly good. It does make you drowsy though and ideally you'd take it then go to bed for a few hours, but you can take it and carry on as normal, albeit a little dopey. The more popular triptan available is Imigram (sp??) which is now also available over the counter without prescription - a breakthrough for migraine sufferers altough the over the counter strength wouldn't be great for bad sufferers.
 
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Hadihaha!!!!!! :D

Mind you, I've been listening to one of the photographers telling me "ooh, I like you on crutches though" on asking how I'm going and hearing I'm hoping to finally kick it (down to one now!!!) next week; before embarking on the usual smut about "liking your crutch - not often I can get away with saying that to a woman :rolleyes:!!! Not sure he was prepared for the response "you can touch it if you like...." whilst handing the stick over.....:D
 
To avoid being seen as arrogant I should now say that that was an amazingly lucky guess. Not so, I was certain I was right (as I was certain that Kingsgate Native would win the July Cup).

The clues were all present and the very fact that you posed the question meant that the answer was not of the standard medical kind. Unless you are a complete nutter ( which your previous postings have generally disproved :)) you were not seeking expert, Harley Street, responses but an application of lateral thinking. The trick was to find the commonality between the Winter and Wednesday.

As one who finds himself analysing everything, eg; the pattern of traffic light signals in an area, the number of Tube trains required to service a particular line if the gap is always 2 minutes or the likely next action of someone in the street, it was pretty straightforward.
 
I get made ill by all sorts of things in the atmosphere esp chemicals of any sort - I had the landlords get my boiler changed to an outside one! - Much better, tho I can't open the kitchen window if it's on LOL. So I also thought of that, as I started reading the thread, tho the symptoms are quite like those of ME [which is related to having had glandular fever at some point eg in childhood]

Shadz: I got prescribed an asthma inhaler about 3 years ago when I was having a lot of trouble breathing, and I kept getting worse! esp after using the puffer... Then I realised it was the propellant in the inhaler which was doing it and switched to a different kind of puffer with no propellant chemicals in it - it comes in a round thingy and you kind of suck in the powder. I also stopped using any kind of aerosols for anything - esp no deodorant [Dove works perfectly well!]
 
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