Cold Sweat

This week has been much better than last week, in a sense that I made a conscious decision not to let stress get to me. Yes, I will get stressed with a heavy workload--and naturally everyone has a little bit of stress in his or her lives--but I will not let it allow me to lose sleep or any of the like.

However, my body enjoys taking the opportunity at moments like this to see what it can get away with. I had my third Twinrix shot yesterday and felt just fine--nothing but a little bit of soreness at the site. Woke up this morning with a eye ache (my term for a headache behind your eyes) and put it down to spending copious amounts of time on the computer (I was making a magazine cover on Indesign and Photoshop yesterday--so those of you who have had to do the same can sympathize with the staring contest you have with your comp.) Anyway, I was prepping for my presentation I had to do today when, quite quickly, my simple 'eye ache' progressed into eye ache accompanied by all over body chills.

I jumped in the shower and literally huddled under the hot water for a good 30 minutes (sorry David Suzuki)--I was too chicken to step out into the coldness again. Then it dawned on me, I have felt this way many times before... I had a fever. I don't even bother to store the thermometer out of reach anymore, I always have it close by because my body seems to have a sickening love affair with fevers. It loves to hook up with the fever at the most inappropriate times (not that I'm suggesting there IS an appropriate time) and it usually loves to hang onto them for days, if not weeks, on end--laughing in the face of Tylenol’s futile attempts to break up the sinful union. Thankfully, I just had a low-grade fever of 101 F. But it was enough to make me feel shitty and climb into bed. I e-mailed my professor and told him there was no way I could do a presentation today and he was very understanding (even excited when I sent him my slideshow as a preview/proof that I wasn't skipping class because I was unprepared).

I left clinic a message (which still hasn't been returned...hmm) and crawled into bed for the remainder of the afternoon, hibernating under many layers of blankets. However, I'm assuming--because you know, I'm a qualified doctor with my WebMD searching skills--that this is a mere reaction to the Twinrix shot I got yesterday. And hopefully not the flu or a chest infection because frankly 1- I don't have time to get sick and 2- I really just want to finish school, I'm so close I can taste it.

UPDATE: Rachael, my nurse, called and said you can be feverish for up to two days... eww. So I guess time will tell if this is the Hep. shot or something else. 

One Response so far.

  1. barf...sounds awful.
    i still have to get my shot...maybe i won't?
    sigh. i hope the fever breaks and you can go back to photoshop tomorrow!