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Aug 10, 2009 - 03:05 AM |
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Okay, now shit's just getting weird. |
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First! A brief recap!
Thursday: Somewhere toward mid-evening, I feel a little warm. I have a fever of 101. I take a couple Tylenol and go to bed.
Friday: I awake with a fever of 103. I decide this is something a transplant patient shouldn't ignore and call the doctor. After some back-and-forth, I'm told to visit the Emergency Room. I go, they check me out, do some tests, then release me. It was felt that whatever I had, it probably wasn't as bad as what I could catch in the hospital. They give me a one-time dose of antibiotic and I leave.
Saturday: I awake and the fever has not improved. The doctor phones two prescriptions for antibiotics into the pharmacy, which I promptly pick up. I take one and wait for the evening dose to take the other. Two hours later, I vomit on an empty stomach. Twenty minutes past that, I become extremely lightheaded, my coordination goes to hell and my eyes become oversensitive to light. I also begin dripping sweat like a hog. With nobody at home to take me to the E.R. I sit down on my bed by the fan and cool off. My temperature is only 101. I take a two-and-a-half hour nap. When I awaken, I feel much better, the fever is lower and I'm hungry. I eat a can of soup and keep it down effortlessly.
I later go to bed and spend all night sweating like a pig some more. I get up at 6AM to change clothes.
Sunday: I awaken feeling much better. My temperature is 98.5. I take my medicines, then go have something to eat. Two hours later, I throw it back up. My temperature is still 98 degrees. I wait for the disorientation again but it does not come. I am not sweating at all. Throughout the day, my temperature remains stable and even comes in at a cool 97.7 degrees. I eat an entire box of macaroni and cheese and keep it down effortlessly.
I go to bed and HOLY FUCK
When I turned out the lights, my eyes went bugshit on me. I began seeing things, not just shadows on walls or spots, but actual things - things that are not in my room. I saw a fucking tiger leap across my room. I saw a bouquet of flowers in my hand. I saw pop-art posters all over the blank wall. I saw ships sailing from harbor - on my ceiling!
I am not lying.
And the whole time, all I could do was watch in reluctant amazement. I knew it was all fake, so none of it frightened me, and everything I saw was benign in nature. These weren't horrible visions, just stuff you might normally dream about, except I was seeing it while awake, and arguably sane. At any time I wanted, I could blink my eyes or wave my hand to make the hallucination disappear or alter form; I had modest control.
I experimented a little: I alternated between wearing my glasses and without. When the glasses are off, the visions become more vague and less representational of actual objects. I'd see an animal but it would lack defining features; I'd see both a lizard and a cat.
With the glasses on, the visions became much sharper and took on as close to three-dimensional form as they could. I saw an entire oceanscape, complete with islands, moon, clouds and waves, on my ceiling.
This only happens when it's dark, however. Turn on the lights, and I see everything as it is. Lights off and it's fantasy time, apparently. I remain calm and rational while it's all happening, it's just my brain going balls-to-the-wall with shadow tricks.
Initially, the anti-rejection drugs gave me a few hallucinations, and I was told that's very normal. It can scramble your brain at first, but the adverse effects are supposed to die down, and have. Or maybe had. Maybe the side-effects can flare up from time to time, except that the things I saw before weren't in this much detail.
So I don't know what the hell is wrong with me now. It began as a fever, moved into a bit of random nausea, then progressed to hallucinations - but only in the dark! I function as a rudimentary medical encyclopedia, and I'm pretty stumped here. I've come up with an initial list of possibilities:
- The world's slowest-acting meningitis
- A heretofor unknown drug interaction
- A brain tumor
- Completely unrelated mental illness showing up at the most coincidental of times
Now I think it's one of the antibiotics they gave me that's inducing the vomiting. I've thrown up twice, each two hours after taking it. I plan to take it tomorrow again, then wait. If it happens, then that's enough to convince me it's a mild allergic reaction and I'm done with that one.
But the hallucinations? It's an amusing personal cinema but I don't want to get to the point where I can't differentiate from anything in the dark. What if I have to drive?
Nobody told me a thing, when I was signing up for new lungs, that I could wind up seeing tigers jump around in my own bedroom. That's something they should really add to the brochure.
(And no, I haven't taken any Ambien.)
| Currently Playing: tricks on my eyes |
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