Of course, right after a post where I said I have a lot of repeating days, I have something that changes things up for me. This wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but I guess any variety helps me from boredom.
I’ve had a few different autoimmune diseases for the majority of my life. I’ve been very lucky because I have never had really severe cases. One of my autoimmune diseases is about hair loss. And while I have lost a lot of hair from time to time, and even had significant bald spots, it has never been as bad as I know it could get. And while hair loss is upsetting, it’s not the worse thing I could deal with and I’m lucky that there are ways to cover it up if I did lose more of my hair.
My other autoimmune disease isn’t as simple. It causes flares and bumps on my skin (for me, it’s mainly on my upper legs). Most of the time these flares are just annoying, but sometimes they can get painful. But they tend to be pretty small so even if they hurt, they aren’t affecting too much of my body. There are a few treatment options I can try to reduce the frequency or size of these flares, but I have never been so severe that I considered doing them. Although I will say that I am considering it more now.
I had a flare appear over the weekend. I’m assuming that a lot of the flares I’m getting are due to stress right now. I’ve noticed that I’m also losing more hair than normal, so I just figured that all my autoimmune issues are reacting to the stress. But this new flare wasn’t like the ones that I’m used to. It was very deep in my skin (compared to being closer to the skin) and it was super painful. I assumed that it would get better as that is what normally happens. But on Monday, it was much worse. I felt a lump under my skin that was the size of a softball and I had a lot of redness and swelling. I have always known that my flares could cause cellulitis because I had experienced a minor case of that, but this was much worse than anything I had ever dealt with.
I really don’t want to go to the hospital for any reason right now, but after trying some of the remedies I know to try at home I knew that I had to. The size of the painful area on my leg was just increasing without stopping and I didn’t want it to turn into something much worse. I did try to do telemedicine first because I thought maybe they could just prescribe me antibiotics, but I had to be seen by a doctor. So I went off to urgent care since I couldn’t get an actual doctor’s appointment any time soon.
Fortunately, it seems like most people feel the same that I do and were avoiding the hospital. There were only 3 other people at urgent care (all suspected COVID cases go to a special section of the ER and were not near urgent care). There was still a bit of a wait because they were limiting how many people were inside urgent care and they wanted everything to be ready and clean before a new patient went in. But there was a waiting area outside in the shade so I waited out there.
Once I got inside, things were really quick for me. I was very lucky that the doctor that saw me was familiar with my autoimmune disease (I’ve encountered a lot who didn’t know anything about it) and she was able to confirm that I did have cellulitis immediately after seeing me. And as expected, she wanted me on a course of antibiotics to resolve it. She said that coming in was the right choice because this wasn’t likely to resolve on its own. It was pretty large, and if left untreated, could need IV antibiotics. I’m glad that I just have to take some pills for a week to hopefully make it go away.
I did giggle a bit when she was saying that this was very large as she measured the site being 8cm by 7cm. All that made me think is that while this did look big on my skin, the tumor in my liver was bigger! I know it’s not a perfect comparison, but it still was what my mind went to.
I was able to get my antibiotics at the hospital and started taking them on Monday evening. The doctor said I should notice a difference in a few days and I’m optimistic that it will start getting better by then. I have already noticed a small reduction in the swelling, but the pain is just as bad as it was before. But I feel better even with the same pain knowing that I got checked out and didn’t just try to wait it out and see.
Even though I was worried about going to urgent care, I will say that everyone at the hospital worked hard to make me feel safe about being there. And they were working hard to make sure all the patients were getting seen as quickly as possible. I was grateful for that because I was nervous about having to go in. But they made it as easy as possible for me. And while it wasn’t a fun adventure to my week, at least it changed things up a bit for me.
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