I almost died. Just spent 3 days in ICU.

[m1ldslide1]

Meningitis is serious business - glad to hear that you've pulled through with minor repercussions.

 

[slpaulson]

Yikes. Meningitis is no joke. My uncle has been disabled since he was two after he had meningitis.

 

[rise]

jeebus, i've had a spinal tap, no fun. and i had my ex serve me papers in the hospital when my heart rate was 150. it's gonna be a long road man, but drink your fluids, water water and more water, even if you throw it up. stay hydrated. and i'm no DR. just relating my experience.

i wish you well man

 

[EGGO]

Holy carp. Hope everything turns for the best after this is all over. It sounds like you'll be fine, right?

 

[JEDIYoda]

We all are happy that you are not alot of dissipated energy right now....or swtarting on the next timne around...lol

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: Barack Obama

Originally posted by: JLee
:Q

Glad you're alright!

QFT

Damb it really has been a shitty year for you

All the best for the next one!

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: Amused

I am still EXTREMELY weak, have a low grade fever and my head SPLITS when I stand or sit up too long (side effect of the spinal tap, they had to poke me 3 times and apparently one or more of the holes has not fully closed yet). My neck also stiffens up.

It's gonna be a long road...

Get well soon amused :thumbsup:

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: hiromizu
Did you have and lumbar puncture?

Yep, and they missed twice. So they poked me 3 times.

The headaches when I sit up and/or stand are STILL killing me a week later.

I told my dr that next time they want to do a spinal tap, just treat me for what they think I have instead. I will NEVER have another lumbar. NEVER!

Probably best to let them do the LP.

If they didn't have a negative LP they probably would have stuck to bacterial meningitis, having seen the bacterial infection of the mastoid process, then loaded you up on antibiotics. This would probably have made you feel a bit better and dropped your temp slightly, whilst giving the Herpes Zoster time to do more damage

 

[ultimatebob]

If you think that's bad... wait until you get the bill from the hospital :|

 

[ForumMaster]

Originally posted by: Barack Obama

Originally posted by: JLee
:Q

Glad you're alright!

QFT

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: ultimatebob
If you think that's bad... wait until you get the bill from the hospital :|

Oh yeah. I hope you got insurance, Amused.

(And I hope I don't get sick like this. Insurance money just wasn't on the budget this semester. Even student insurance is quite expensive.)

 

[Gothgar]

wow shit, glad to hear you are on the road to recovery

 

[krotchy]

Glad to hear you came out of it ok. I had Viral Meningitis about 11 years ago (I was like 13 though). The headaches are so awful Its indescribable to anyone who hasn't experienced it. The worst part of the experience for me (besides the nurse being unable to find a vein on me either) was throwing up in the CAT scan machine. My head was strapped down and I was took weak to get out so I was laying on my back with my head up throwing up all over myself. Yayyy. I am really glad to hear that after putting it off so long you managed to come out alright. Meningitis is not something you screw around with, the longer you waited the more likely there is no return.

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: ultimatebob
If you think that's bad... wait until you get the bill from the hospital :|

Oh yeah. I hope you got insurance, Amused.

(And I hope I don't get sick like this. Insurance money just wasn't on the budget this semester. Even student insurance is quite expensive.)

I hope that he has GOOD insurance. I didn't know how bad my Aetna coverage was at work was until I got into a fairly serious accident, and ended up eating about $7,000 of ER and physical therapy costs that they refused to cover.

 

[destrekor]

Well viral meningitis tends to really be a difficult animal to directly treat, rather, if the case is severe, you get therapeutic treatment.
Looking up more on viral meningitis, and I'm fairly confident I did indeed have a case of viral meningitis, and I'm without suspicion that it may have had an impact on my cognitive processes, or that could just be me placing blame on something other than myself for recent difficulty in essentially maintaining focus/attention.

But most viral meningitis cases, the underlying viral infection tends to not really change course with any kind of medication. Sometimes it might but it appears no clinical study has linked a good amount of the viral infections as responding to meds.
Zoster is one of those viruses that appears to not directly be treatable, rather the symptoms and overall health can be cared for.
So, it appears everybody is different, and their body will respond differently to viral meningitis. Maybe my body fought off something like Zoster without any medical aid, although with two months of a noticeable headache (with the first 2 weeks being a rather debilitating headache, remaining time diminishing to barely noticeable), I cannot help but wonder if there was any permanent damage, and why after a negative X-ray and CT scan no test was done for anything else. Then again, when it was getting time to move on to MRI, we all kind of agreed it was likely not necessary due to the way the headache was subsiding. All of this was like into the 3rd or 4th week iirc.
And not sure they could have really done anything to get it to go away any faster. And certainly a two-month long headache episode, with nasty symptoms in the first week or two, cannot be normal in a patient with no history of anything similar. hmmm

 

[ICRS]

Most herpes meningitis is caused by genital and oral herpes simplex. You sure they said herpes Zoster.

Lots of people die each year from Herepes Simplex Meningitis and Encephalitis.

 

[Amused]

Hi guys.

A little update: The spinal headaches have eased a bit. The low grade fever is still there (99.3 this am). I have neck stiffness and some headache that is constant no matter the orientation of my body, so I am guessing that's the meningitis. On a bright note I was able to casually crack my neck today and that brought a great deal of relief.

destreckor is correct: Viral meningitis is largely untreatable. They gave me massive doses of IV Zovirax in the hospital, but I doubt it did much. It was the combination of the meningitis and the Mastoid infection that caused me to get so bad so fast. Either by themselves would have been relatively minor.

As for cognitive function, besides the distraction caused by pain, I think I'm doing okay so far. Last night I gave an accurate explanation of quantum physics, specifiaclly the Heisenberg principle and the misleading assumption of the observer effect to my girlfriend (I am SO fucking romantic!) and didn't have much trouble with it, so I seem to be doing okay. (She had the misfortune of asking me "what is a "Heisenberg Compensator?")

Yes, as much as I blame the very existence of insurance for our current medical care crisis in the US, I am doubly insured with little to no copay and no deductibles. So financially I am okay. My brother is filthy rich too, so even if I get a surprise, I'm pretty well covered.

I'm drinking lots of water and OJ.

The depressing part? I am old (41), and as such, my body quickly loses muscle mass. My arms have shrunk to less than 15" from a peak of 20" just earlier this year. I am resting my hopes on muscle memory...

 

[LilPima]

Glad to hear you're recovering! Hope you feel better very soon :thumbsup:

 

[eits]

glad to hear you're alright. meningitis kills. next time you feel like you have the flu and you've got neck stiffness or you feel dural tension, get to the hospital.

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: ICRS
Most herpes meningitis is caused by genital and oral herpes simplex. You sure they said herpes Zoster.

Lots of people die each year from Herepes Simplex Meningitis and Encephalitis.

While HSV-1 is a common Herpes link for Meningitis, Zoster is kind of just as common. What ends up happening is the body gets shingles, but instead of presenting shingles on the skin, it is activated in the spinal column, which in that case usually ends up resulting in meningitis or encephalitis.

Wiki'd how Zoster works, but I knew it was the link between chicken pox and shingles. didn't know you could get shingles without having the characteristic rash.

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: eits
glad to hear you're alright. meningitis kills. next time you feel like you have the flu and you've got neck stiffness or you feel dural tension, get to the hospital.

most of the time they can't do anything other than run lots of testing and possibly end up pumping in a general antiviral medication through IV.

The big point of going to the doctor would be to differentiate between viral and bacterial, although bacterial tends to present itself in a vastly different manner. But yeah, generally the antiviral meds are kind of like shooting blindly, it might do something, but trials haven't conclusively determined that stuff like Zovirax does anything for herpes or influenza-caused meningitis.

But the end point is to not mess around and at least get tested, but if viral, don't expect miracle cures. It might be a brutal path to recovery, and the most help you might get is therapeutic treatments. But with modern treatment, and as long as it advances in the normal manner, you'll be fine. Why hospitalization is so stressed, is because sometimes its a rare viral infection, or is caused by a less-common mechanism, and may - although rarely - result in nasty complications. An ideal, non-serious, and more common viral-meningitis infection, will generally be nothing other than a really bad few-week ordeal. Many people go through it without medical assistance thinking it's nothing other than a bad infection.

Mind you, I'm not stressing skip the doctors, as on the contrary, you should make a trip to the doctor if yeah, you have flu-like symptoms and a stiff neck. I had that, but dammit they never did a spinal tap. Do not know why, but whatever. Never even mentioned the idea of a spinal tap, and I'm fairly confident it ended up being viral meningitis. But the point is, someone trained should be the one to monitor progress.

 

[eits]

Originally posted by: destrekor

Originally posted by: eits
glad to hear you're alright. meningitis kills. next time you feel like you have the flu and you've got neck stiffness or you feel dural tension, get to the hospital.

most of the time they can't do anything other than run lots of testing and possibly end up pumping in a general antiviral medication through IV.

The big point of going to the doctor would be to differentiate between viral and bacterial, although bacterial tends to present itself in a vastly different manner. But yeah, generally the antiviral meds are kind of like shooting blindly, it might do something, but trials haven't conclusively determined that stuff like Zovirax does anything for herpes or influenza-caused meningitis.

But the end point is to not mess around and at least get tested, but if viral, don't expect miracle cures. It might be a brutal path to recovery, and the most help you might get is therapeutic treatments. But with modern treatment, and as long as it advances in the normal manner, you'll be fine. Why hospitalization is so stressed, is because sometimes its a rare viral infection, or is caused by a less-common mechanism, and may - although rarely - result in nasty complications. An ideal, non-serious, and more common viral-meningitis infection, will generally be nothing other than a really bad few-week ordeal. Many people go through it without medical assistance thinking it's nothing other than a bad infection.

Mind you, I'm not stressing skip the doctors, as on the contrary, you should make a trip to the doctor if yeah, you have flu-like symptoms and a stiff neck. I had that, but dammit they never did a spinal tap. Do not know why, but whatever. Never even mentioned the idea of a spinal tap, and I'm fairly confident it ended up being viral meningitis. But the point is, someone trained should be the one to monitor progress.

i must have skimmed over the part that it was viral and not bacterial. it's still dangerous, but not nearly as life-threatening. either way, anytime you get a stiff neck and feel like you might have the flu, you should still get to a hospital and tell someone. headache, fever, and stiff neck together are a huge red flag for meningitis.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: videogames101
See? Don't trust doctors!

Always ask ATOT for medical advice first!

(Hope you get better!)

I bought my first computer from an electrical engineer who was so cool. I talked to him for 2-3 hours before leaving with it on a train. I used to call him up every once in a while and pump him for info (I was pretty much a newbie then). One time I called and his wife said he was sick and needed an appendectomy (Kaiser). I called a couple of weeks later and she said he'd died at the hospital.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: destrekor

Originally posted by: ICRS
Most herpes meningitis is caused by genital and oral herpes simplex. You sure they said herpes Zoster.

Lots of people die each year from Herepes Simplex Meningitis and Encephalitis.

While HSV-1 is a common Herpes link for Meningitis, Zoster is kind of just as common. What ends up happening is the body gets shingles, but instead of presenting shingles on the skin, it is activated in the spinal column, which in that case usually ends up resulting in meningitis or encephalitis.

Wiki'd how Zoster works, but I knew it was the link between chicken pox and shingles. didn't know you could get shingles without having the characteristic rash.

Yup, the most dangerous case of shingles you can get, sometimes fatal. Usually, shingles emanates from one (or maybe 2) vertebra and the rash you get is limited to the portion of the body that is serviced by a nerve coming from that vertebra. In my case I think it was two vertebra, so my rash was over a larger area.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: destrekor

Originally posted by: ICRS
Most herpes meningitis is caused by genital and oral herpes simplex. You sure they said herpes Zoster.

Lots of people die each year from Herepes Simplex Meningitis and Encephalitis.

While HSV-1 is a common Herpes link for Meningitis, Zoster is kind of just as common. What ends up happening is the body gets shingles, but instead of presenting shingles on the skin, it is activated in the spinal column, which in that case usually ends up resulting in meningitis or encephalitis.

Wiki'd how Zoster works, but I knew it was the link between chicken pox and shingles. didn't know you could get shingles without having the characteristic rash.

Oh yes! If you are prone to stress induced shingles, it is very common to get them with little to no rash. In fact, not long ago I had a case on my head with no rash caused by overtraining in the gym.

I have had 3 bouts of shingles since I contracted Chicken Pox at the age of 30 (that was exciting). All from extreme overtraining when combining intense lifting routines with intense cardio and cutting. Not healthy, I know, and I learned my lesson... or so I thought. Only my first bout came with a remarkable rash.