Ye Old Week From Hell...

My life is riddled with unfortunate events (for further examples - see posts entitled "A Series of Unfortunate Events" and "Ahsirt Meets Murphy"). Yesterday I was diagnosed with the flu. Ok - it's the middle of summer, it's freaking 90 degrees - how the hell did I get the flu??? Consequently, I missed one and a half days of my second rotation. This all started Saturday night. Around 6:00, I began to feel as though I had been beaten, which was quite odd because I didn't remember fighting anyone or being bludgened with a bat. Sunday morning I arose to feel, for lack of better terminology, like shit. I drug myself to work because I couldn't let CF down. CF is one of the pharmacists I work with. He gets a little flustered when the wait starts piling up, so I just pictured him having a mental breakdown and being carted away in a straight jacket if someone didn't come in to at least run the register. By lunch time Sunday, I felt considerably better and was actually thinking that perhaps my slight hangover from Friday night was to blame. This was all dispelled Monday morning when I woke up and could barely walk. For the next three days, my being able to stand up relied solely upon me taking at least 600mg ibuprofen every 4 hours (as you will find out later, this totally fried my stomach). By Wednesday, I was pretty bad. I almost fell asleep in the car on the way to work. This is a scary sensation. I was driving along and the music was getting softer and softer and the car got warmer and warmer and then RUMMMMMMMMMMMM - I hit that damn strip that wakes you up. Pshew! Thank God for that little thing. I made it until 12 and had to go home. I couldn't even get the lids off the stock bottles I was so weak. Thursday morning when I woke up, I still felt much like shit, so I called in sick and took myself to the doctor. He promptly diagnosed me with the flu and told me to drink plenty of water. He also told me that my stomach was inflamed and to stop taking ibuprofen and please take acetaminophen. I hate Tylenol. So...I started taking Prilosec OTC every morning and cut back on my daily intake of ibuprofen. :)

The final hit below the belt for this week - I have probably killed my preceptor. She is a double organ transplant receiver. She has her brother's kidney and a 16yo's pancreas. She's well controlled on immunosuppressive drugs and I totally exposed her to the flu. I hope the incubation period is longer than seven days, because I think that may be detrimental to my evaluation.

On the positive side, my preceptor said all would be forgotten if I would show up at 7:30AM on Tuesday rather than 8:30AM. I think that's a pretty good deal...except Monday is our 4th of July party and we've got two 1/4 kegs sitting in our kegrator just calling my name. And...I'm supposed to be making chemotherapy Tuesday morning. This should be real nice.