The Background Story

I started having consistent headaches sometime around April. The first thing I did was go to Pearle Vision to get my glasses updated, thinking an outdated prescription was causing the headaches. When the new glasses didn't help much, I attributed them to stress, since I had recently started a new job. As the summer went on, I had even more reason to consider stress a causative force, as Matt's dad started not doing well health-wise. He had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor two summers before and had already gone through surgeries, chemo, radiation, and other treatments.

Typically the headaches didn't have other symptoms associated with them, and seemed to ease up with tylenol and caffeinated sodas. I started drinking a lot of Coke. They didn't happen everyday, or with any pattern. And with all that was going on already, I never went to get them checked out.

In the week after Matt's dad died I had headaches everyday. Still I thought they were stress induced. I was up to taking about 975mg of tylenol three times a day while awake, plus two sodas.

Friday night (8/14) I was due to return to work, so I tried to sleep in until about noon. When I got up I just didn't feel good. I was feeling hot and cold, and just kind of 'out of it' and anxious. Around 5pm I decided to take my temperature and found I had a mild fever. I called into work and the charge nurse told me if I had a fever I should just stay home. Since I had already been out for a week on berevement leave, I thought it a good idea to get a work release note. I also wanted to make sure this was just a virus vs the flu. So I went to the Minute Clinic. The NP there did an assessment and a rapid flu test and couldn't find the reason for my elevated pulse and temperature (p 116, t 101.4) and headache. He sent me home with instructions to try taking motrin for the fever and pain, and to go to the ER if I still had a fever in the morning.