Ok, so the truth is, I am convalescing.
I was in denial but here I've been back from vacation for a week and I still feel awful. I am ok for work but not much else. I want to go to sleep between 6-8 pm. I feel wiped out. And the weirdest side effect of this strep antibody pseudo autoimmune problem is that when I am convalescing, coffee tastes bad.
Yep, I am off coffee.
I stopped it for over a year after the 2012 round. It just tasted bad. Tea was still fine.
After 2014, I stopped for a while.... I don't know. I was so sick that I don't know. I coughed for 6 months.
So this time is MUCH BETTER in that we caught it early, I got penicillin, I didn't have sepsis symptoms and I only missed a day and a half of work. BUT I am back to a mild chronic fatigue reaction, though much less bad than in 2014.
Dang blang rowrbazzle %$^$#@&*^^*!!!
Though that is how people feel convalescing: impatient to feel well again and like it's taking forever and glum. I know it's normal and a sign of healing and I am lucky to heal. Happy to not croak.
This round rather confirms for me that it IS an antibody problem, since I felt worst AFTER the antibiotics, right around the 30 day mark when the antibodies should peak. Then they trail off in 1-2 months. So 60-90 days overall. (My science brain argues that it could also be that I am terrified of getting sepsis again, since the mortality is 28-50%, so terror is not unreasonable. This is why we are tracking the antibody rise and fall. It's SCIENCE. COOL.)
The other disconcerting thing is that it presented as face pain and then turned out to be a sinus infection with NONE of the normal sinus infection symptoms. So, like, WHAT. Why do I not just get a blow torched feeling throat like I used to with strep A? No, it's going to show up somewhere else. I don't want to feel paranoid, but it's unnerving. I still should trail off to talk to the infectious disease specialist but I am so tired AND I think he'll just say, huh, interesting, yeah, we don't know what to do. Stay on it and pay attention. Great.
And the dream with the child's head falling off. None of the adults even notices that the child's head falls off and they refuse to help or even believe me. So I have to do the best I can alone.....gluing the head on with epoxy is some spectacular alternative medical therapy, don't you think? I do have some help, two doctors, but it's in a sort of a distant noncommittal way.