I took a sick day from work today after struggling just to get through the day yesterday with this ear infection. I’d planned on feeling better today. Indeed, when I woke up this morning, I felt rested, like I’d had a full night’s sleep. I took my medication in the morning and all seemed well. My ear still ached a little and my throat was substantially more sore, but it takes a while for the medication to take effect.
By 9am, however, I started feeling bad again. The pain meds were working, but I’d accidentally taken them on an empty stomach and they made me queasy. Just turning my head was bad. Long story short, I spend from about 9am-6pm in bed. Probably two-thirds of that time I was sleeping. In many respects, this is my ideal situation when I’m sick because I’m a bad sick person. I like to just curl up under a blanket and be left alone until it all passes. With a family, of course, that’s much harder, but Kelly was a ministering angel today, getting the Little Man off to school and taking care of the Little Miss while I suffered away.
You see, illness makes me antisocial, to say nothing of grumpy and even melodramatic. I’m liable to complain loud and often about how lousy I feel. I don’t like it when others do this and I hate it when I do it–thus one reason I left being left completely alone.
By 6pm, I could get out of bed without feeling queasy and I was even able to finally eat some food, thank goodness. And herein lies a tale:
I am suspect that the cause of today’s strange bout of debilitating queasiness was due to taking the pain medicine on an empty stomach. It seems to me I’ve taken the same medicine, in the same dosage on an empty stomach before without any ill effects. I started thinking about the last time I felt this awful and it occurred to me it was the day after my last Rainbow Room Birthday Bash dinner back in April 2008. Back then it was due to an allergic reaction and–
–it occurred to me that it might be the same today. I recalled that I noticed two hives throughout the day. And then I have a very uncertain memory of receiving this particular antibiotic a few years ago and having a strange reaction to it. I’m not allergic to any medications as far as I know, but always curious to learn new things, I decided to perform an experiment.
I asked Kelly to pick up some Benadryl at the store. I took the Benadryl at 5:30pm. By 6:15pm, the hives were gone and I could get out of bed and move around without feeling queasy. And I could eat!
I suspect I might be having some kind of reaction to the antibiotic. I took one more this evening but I’m not taking any of the prescription pain medicine in order to rule that out. I’ll see how I feel over the next 12 hours. If I get queasy again, I’ll call the doctor tomorrow and ask them to change the prescription. Taking the Benadryl and feeling better convinced me that it worked against whatever was making me allergic, so I’m not concerned about taking the one additional pill. I can always take more Benadryl later if I need to. Stay-tuned tomorrow to find out the results.
I’m not yet decided on whether I’ll go into the office tomorrow. In any case, I’m heading back upstairs shortly. I don’t want to push my luck. I am feeling better. No pain in my ear, although it’s still clogged and ringing. My throat is still sore but not as much as before (warm salt water really helps!). Most importantly, the queasiness is gone.
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