Aham Vyaktam

Today is the first day in the last 10 days that I woke up with a temperature of 97.9. I was running a temperature of 103 and this has been the longest and fiercest fever I ever had. I was stuck sick at home for 10 days, no work and no cooking at home. Everyday I woke up with fever and cried to Hari telling that am gonna die. Now if I come to think of it, I really am ashamed :-)

Hari didn’t go to office coz of me and I cannot credit him enough for how he took care of me. It was surprising that the doctors never gave any medicine for me, despite diagnosing that I have viral fever. They kept asking me to take Tylenol every 4 hours and drink lots of fluid till the fever goes away. How will the fever go off with just Tylenol, I mean, how will the virus get killed by just Tylenol? I could never understand. The doctors said its unethical to give injection or antibiotic for a viral fever and I just have to live with it till its gone. Had it been India, the doc would have given an injection and atleast 3 antibiotics the first day you go to him, and some doctors will be so generous to hospitalize you even if you run only 99 degrees LOL. Having seen all that, the so called medical ethics here was so surprising and funny for me. Not a day passed without cursing them, no matter they don’t prescribe antibiotics for our own good.

Whenever I get ill, I have this habit of doing a bit of a self-diagnosis. This is what I did when my lymph nodes protruded after fever, before 2 years. A generous doctor who was so much in love with me (knowing that I can get all my expense reimbursed) wanted to retain me in the hospital for atleast 10 days saying that the lymph nodes could be due to tuberculosis or cancer and asked me to undergo a biopsy. I had to fight with her to get discharged telling her that I don’t have any of those crap and its just reactive lymph node for the viral fever I had. And my diagnosis was definitely correct. The lymph nodes went away once I recovered from fever. I can give many such instances for my successful self-diagnosis. I had discovered I had typhoid, jaundice, etc, in the past. So I have been pretty confident of my medical knowledge. But it turned into over confidence when I thought I had typhoid when I fell ill during my wedding. Well, I had the same symptoms and even the blood test result came back positive for Salmonella Typhi. So a doctor treated me for it. I came to know that the self-diagnosis was an over-kill when another doctor said its just viral and the blood test will show positive for typhi if I have had typhi before :-( Everyone was scolding me left, right and middle for doing a doctor’s job. Well, will 2 years of Biology in the 11th and 12th grade not make me half a doctor? Hehehehe

I get so paranoid when I have persistent fevers and I come up with some dreadful disease linking the symptoms. I came up with AIDS before 2 years when I lost 5 pounds in 3 days (god knows if the weighing machine was faulty) and my WBC dropped by 2000. I came up with cholera when I had nausea and diarrhea. Do you know what I came up with this time? Cancer :-)
These things are not very impressive to be written about one’s self, are they? Hmmm…that’s fine. Those of you who have/have had crush on me, thinking that am meticulous, ingenious, etc, etc can rest assured that you haven’t missed someone great in your life LOL.

Anyways, the fever phase is finally over or so I think. Am gonna get a huge email from Prasath anna about hope and confidence and a huge lecture from Hari, for this one pessimistic phrase of mine “or so I think” :-)

Am glad am out of a 10-day long fever and have to start eating apples and dry fruits to regain strength. And more importantly I should try not to self-diagnose and try not to be over scared or atleast not to be overtly scared :-)