continued from My Story Part 3...
On the 24th of February i reached yet another unbearable point in my illness, and i was rushed back to the emergency room. Amazingly the same doctor that had seen me in the ER the too previous two time was there and stayed overtime to assess me and make sure I was taken care of before he left. My resident doctor was also there and began yet another assessment on my feverish, aching body. This was by far the worst my pain had been so far in this process, and all I could think about was getting relief. The doctor, knowing the pain levels that I was in immediately ordered dilaudid for me, and after countless tries and misses, the nurses established IV access and got me the pain relief I so badly needed. Operating on the solid ground of the fact that none of my doctors had a clue what wasw wrong, we started again from sqare one. My assessment revealed a soft murmor in my heart, so speculation of Rheumatic Fever began to arise. (i would later come to find out that the murmor -inflammation of my heart tissue- and the occasional pain upon taking a deep breath - inflammation of my lung tissue- are both symptoms of my disease.
With my blood cultures continuing to come back negative, but my blood indicative of an infection, doctors were baffled. Again i was admitted, treated with fluids, antibiotics, and a steady stream of dilaudid for the pain. It was at this point that they considered the heart murmor enough relevance to check it out and treat me for Rheumatic Fever, while they continued searching for more answers. (My symptoms fit the profile of so many things, so one diagnosis could never be agreed on by my medical team that now involved about 10 different doctors and specialists) I was given extremely high doses of aspirin and underwent an EKG and echocardiogram - both of which came back as normal. It was during this time that we first heard mention of Adult Still's Disease. The infectious disease doc ran TB tests, HIV/AIDS, leukemia, lymphoma, and many more tests, all of which came back negative - leading her to thing the "strep" was just a "red herrin" getting the attention as the main problem when it was likely just the final trigger. All my other doctors "respectfully disagreed" and after 4 days of pokes, prods and pain i was discharged and being treated for Rheumatic Fever.
The aspirin (975 mg/day) didnt seem to make a difference, and i took Vicodin around the clock just to be able to function. 6 days after being discharged my mom realized that these meds werent cutting it, and if something didnt change fast we would be back in the hospital before the weekend was over. We called the Rheumatologist that i was to follow up with and she prescribed me Prednisone (60mg/day) - a very high dose - to mask my terrible symptoms. It was at this point when things started to turn around and make sense. I saw her (my rheumatologist) later that week and she started to piece together my labs and symptoms. Finally a week or so after that - 6 1/2 weeks to date, she gave me the final, accurate, diagnosis of Adult Still's Disease...
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