GTKY w/o 4.2-4.3

acleverusername

What's the sickest you've ever been? 

mrsmtothek

When I was 9 I had double pneumonia and I was in bed for 2 weeks straight. I remember it so vividly because it was the last month of school, and I was so annoyed that I had to be in bed when the weather was so nice and my friends were out having fun. But it was so difficult to breathe, I was mostly in and out of sleep. Read all of the Anne of Green Gables books  

optimistgardener

@mrsmtothek Anne of Green Gables was a great series! I think I read them around the same time.

I came down with the flu while backpacking in the Balkans in 2003. I developed a high fever in Sarajevo, and, sensing that I needed to be somewhere where someone could take care of me, got on a train back to Zagreb in Croatia where I had stayed in a hostel with a very motherly owner just a week or so prior. I was hallucinating that the sky was made of fire by the time I got to her hostel. She had no spare beds but, when I told her if she didn't have space for me I needed her to help me get to a hospital, she found a spare mattress and put it on the floor in a corner. For the next 2 weeks, my temperature hovered around 103, and I could barely keep anything more than water and thin soup down, and sometimes I had to crawl to the bathroom because I couldn't walk. I distinctly remember lying face down on the tile in the hostel bathroom and thinking, "well, if i die, at least this tile feels lovely and cool against my cheek." The hostel owner was adamant that it was "just the flu" and I would be fine if I would only keep trying to eat the homemade chicken soup and tea she put in front of me. I obviously eventually recovered, and so I guess she was right.

ReadyForaB

@optimistgardener That sounds terrifying! 

@mrsmtothek mine is also when I had pneumonia around that age.

I had pneumonia when I was in second grade and was hospitalized for about a week. I was discharged on Christmas Eve and my mother and I slid on ice and almost got into an accident on the way home. Fun times.

More recently, I was pretty sick with covid in January. Not hospitalized but I was a little scared for a day or so. If it wasn’t so out of control in my area at the time I would’ve considered going to the hospital but I was hearing horror stories of that as well. My Fitbit was telling me good job for working out while I was half asleep on the couch one night, my heart rate was so out of control. 

firecracker_mama

I developed the flu and a double ear and sinus infection a few days after a lumbar puncture. I was in bed for over a week straight. I got short of breath for months afterwards. Even my short bit of bedrest turned my endurance for basic exercise upside down and walking was all I could do for months.

mambo5-2

I also think it was a time a had pneumonia I was a hot mess. It was sick 10+ days me fever kept coming back and I was so tired. 

thankfullyamama

When I was 12 I had a downhill skiing accident and broke three ribs, my tailbone and my left wrist. Then to top it all off I got strep throat so bad I was on IV hydration and antibiotics AFTER three whole weeks of oral antibiotics that did not work. I lost like 30lbs because I was broken in every which way. It was awful I was in so much pain I couldn’t sit or lay comfortably or eat or drink so just a perpetual state of pain for about a month. But I got over it and everything healed well thankfully!

maggiemadeit

Mono knocked me down so hard in high school. My fever was so high I was hallucinating and passed out in the doctors office. I lost 20 pounds in 3 weeks because my throat was so sore and swollen that I couldn’t eat. And the infection damaged liver so I got jaundice. It was the worst. 

Weirdly enough I got mono AGAIN after that, even though normal people only get mono once because they develop immunity. Unpleasant medical oddity 🤪

anniemarie887

Omg these are some wild tales! 

@maggiemadeit I also have had mono twice… and I’ve had covid twice. Once after being vaxed, and once after being boosted. Ironically I am generally VERY healthy and rarely get sick. 

I had the flu about 12 years ago and didn’t get out of bed for a week. So not the level of @optimistgardener but when ppl compare covid to a bad flu I kind of 🙄 bc dude, a bad flu blows IMO. 

That is probably my most prolonged illness. My most violent was 11 years ago and I couldn’t stop vomiting or going to the bathroom, terrible abdominal pain, wound up going to the ER bc we were worried it was my appendix. Never got a solid answer, just a “bug” that they loaded me up on meds and iv fluids and discharged me like 6 hours later. 

acleverusername

Wow - all of your tales are wacky! I'm glad ya'll made it through. 

The inspiration for this GTKY was my first-ever migraine and the vomiting it induced; it made me try and remember the last time I had illness-induced vomiting. I couldn't remember. 

AFM, the sickest I remember being was Christmas 2015. I had gotten the flu vaccine early in December, but must have been exposed to the flu virus before I developed full-immunity (or, you know, the virus mutated and the vaccine wasn't effective). By Dec 22-23, my throat was on fire, I was coughing up both my lungs, I was starting to run a fever. At one point, I took so many meds (cough syrop, advil, tylenol, etc.), that when I went to count up the dosage, I realized I had taken too much acetaminophen in 24 hrs and ended up calling Poison Control center. *face palm* I was coughing so badly, and my lungs hurt so bad, I was afraid it was pneumonia and so I ended up going to ER on Christmas Day at 10am. What a way to spend Christmas, right? (Btw, best time to go to ER is Christmas Day at 10am. I think I was in and out of there in 1hr). The ER doc actually prescribed me oxy because it's a cough suppressant. OMG, the hallucinations I had on that drug... it made me understand why ppl get addicted to it. I remember lying on the couch, hallucinating and sweating buckets. But, hey, it stopped my cough. My friends felt so bad for me at the time. A few ended up stopping by and dropping off care packages on my front porch (I have a bunch of family doc friends so I was messaging them asking if I'm dying.) 

I had plans to go home for Christmas and those got ixnayed quickly. My boyfriend at the just had just had hernia surgery, so I couldn't spend time with him either, and even when I started feeling better. My sister and her family ended up coming for New Years and at least we got to enjoy that. 

This whole experience also made me realize just how sad and lonely it can be being by yourself at Christmas Time. 

mamafox14

My worst sickness was a total shit show. It started with one morning I felt like absolute shit, abdominal pain, nausea, general crappiness. I called my doc because based on my symptoms it seemed like my appendix. They told me to go straight to the ER. Next thing I know I’m having an appendectomy (like I literally had to call my family from the parking lot and tell them to come because I had gone in alone not expecting that outcome).

Fast forward like 3 weeks or so….I had had one of those nexplanon arm birth control implants for like six months maybe and suddenly it started COMING OUT! Talk about pain, try snagging the corner of that thing on your jacket! The doc said it was likely because of my appendectomy and when my body was healing it decided to try and reject my implant. Cool. So they took it out and put me on full spectrum antibiotics because naturally it was infected. I had never had an issue with antibiotics so they put me on Bactrim.

Fast forward a couple of days from there…I feel terrible. I had a fever and my face and chest and legs were all blotchy/itchy. I COULD NOT STOP VOMITING. I called my doctors office to tell them about it and to say “hey, I think I might be allergic to these antibiotics, I have never in my life felt this horrible and I have a full body rash and can’t stop puking” they said (over the phone, didn’t think I needed to come in) that it was impossible I was having an allergic reaction and under no circumstances to stop taking my antibiotics. Well after several more DAYS of this I finally went to the ER because I started vomiting blood. Then I spent hours and hours fighting with the nurses and docs because they also said it couldn’t be an allergic reaction and no one would listen to me. Finally one doc came in, pulled back my blankets to look at my rash and said those people are nuts this is definitely an allergic reaction! And by that time it had inflamed my liver and pancreas, and I had a bleeding stomach ulcer because I’d been taking ibuprofen on an empty stomach for days because the vomiting gave me such a bad headache. 

I ended up hospitalized for several days until my organs all returned to healthy functioning but that was definitely one of the worst experiences. To this day puking freaks me out because I just flash back to that feeling of never being able to stop. 

Life lesson: doctors and nurses are super smart and know way more than me BUT if I think something is wrong keep fighting to be heard because no one else is going to advocate for me the way I can. 

acleverusername

Okay @mamafox14... you "win". 

bearmomma1

@mamafox14 holy shit! That is insanity. 

I can’t believe all these stories. Y’all are rockstars for getting through it! The only time I was hospitalized for any sickness was when I was a newborn and got pneumonia. I had an IV through my head with a paper cup over it (from what I’ve been told) Other than that I had yearly strep throat which always needed a dose of antibiotics to knock it out. Covid knocked me out earlier this year but was at home manageable. 

mambo5-2

I was hospitalized with suspected sepsis as an infant, I obviously don't remember that but did find all of the hospital notes when looking for my vaccine history.