Rash Actions
*sigh* I was beginning to think I’d be able to hold onto my good health for 2011. That’s all I ask for. One good year. The Fates are contrary/ornery/just plain mean.
I actually don’t know what the problem is. It started Monday this week with a general sensitivity in my lower back. I figured I’d just strained my back mildly lifting boxes at work. Since The Big Boss Who Can’t Make a Schedule to Save His Soul left work early that day due to blowing out his lower back, I also attributed some of it to some sort of foolish monkey-see-monkey-do trick my Id was playing on me.
By Wednesday the pain centered more on the lowest part of the small of my back and my left butt cheek. It was starting to hurt to sit down. I finally asked the long-suffering Professor to take a look while I dropped my drawers and mooned him. He discovered that I had a blotchy red rash in places that I’ve previously alluded to and have no intent of providing further details on.
Today when I got up I felt hammered. Not sick, exactly, but generally unwell without being able to put my finger on a specific problem (except that my butt hurt). Since the rash appeared to be progressing a bit, I made an appointment to see my personal physician. She wasn’t available Saturday, and I hate having to go through my entire freaking history with a new doctor, so I made an appointment Monday morning, before I had to go into work.
Tonight the rash is doing a nice job of making inroads on Left Buttockia, and is sending advance armies along the crease at the top of my right thigh all the way around the front of my leg. Damned thing is moving quickly, and I’m thinking I may be forced to make a doctor appointment tomorrow after all.
Of course, I’ve made plans to volunteer at a Cat Shelter charity function tomorrow, and there’s nobody to cover for me. I’ll have to see what I can work out.
I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that this is not the CTCL starting to get aggressive. Like as not, it’s just a simple skin infection, but it’s making me nervous.
Could it be Shingles ?
I hope that whatever it is, it leaves quickly!
Cellulitis? Different location, but the description matches what Hubby had a while back. Sending healing thoughts your direction.
Alli
I can’t imagine what it might be, but by your description, I would say it’s a safe bet to rule out shingles. If it were shingles, there would have been no doubt in your mind that something was horribly wrong from the onset. I know this because my grandfather got shingles after my second episode of chicken pox. I spent years feeling guilty about that, but my doctor recently explained to me that it probably had nothing to do with my chicken pox even though they are both caused by the same virus, herpes zoster. He also reassured me that because I’ve had medically verified chicken pox twice, not only will I never get it again, but I am less likely, rather than more likely, to get shingles.
My mother’s former partner didn’t feel so hot one morning and by that afternoon he was sick enough that he went home and went to bed, pretty serious for a work-a-holic like him. If he hadn’t had to get up to go to the bathroom he wouldn’t have known that he could only barely walk. My mother called me to take him to the hospital as she was out of town. It turned out that he had Guillainââ¬âBarré syndrome and he would have been unlikely to survive the night without a ventilator. (Not that your symptoms have anything in common with that, thankfully!) The next malady he thought he’d wait out many years later was a terrible case of heartburn that Maalox didn’t help. He’d actually had a heart attack and didn’t live through the night to "go see the doctor in the morning." That is why I can’t stand to hear of someone I care about waiting to seek medical assistance.
But the point is that whatever this is, it is progressing. Please don’t ignore this any further, OK?
So, with the above in mind, I’m going to try to be patient and wait for the patient to report back to us about what the doctor says. However, if you are feeling markedly worse on Saturday, no matter what other obligations you have, you MUST go to see a physician! Even if you have to go to the ER. It’s important.
Here’s hoping it is something simple and easily treatable.