Vacation.

I am on vacation. Thats why all my posts have been about "my life" instead "cool medical mishaps." At any rate, when my last shift ended at 7 AM I headed to conference. I had just 3.5 hours to remain awake until I started 2 weeks and 3 days of vacation. As conference progressed my throat felt scratchier and scratchier. I was getting a cold.

Not a big deal. 3-5 days and its over. Except that for the last four years, EVERY time, w/o fail, that I get a viral URI I subsequently contract a bacterial sinus infection and suffer airway hyper-reactivity. This inevitably requires antibiotics and corticosteroids.

It started like this. I've visited the same nurse practitioner since I started medical school. It was the end of my first year and we were at the most intense portion of the curriculum, a class called "Mechanisms of Disease" and I got a viral URI. I went in pleading for early intervention. She correctly denied, being skillful in dealing with young know-nothing know-it-alls. Told me if I wasn't better in a week, come back. Good advice--advice I've dispensed about 1.7 million times to patients of my own since.

So a week later I come back. Febrile, wheezing, and lymph nodes the size of whole pecans all over my neck. A month later after a long course of steroids and antibiotics I was 10 pounds lighter and finally able to maintain consciousness for over an hour. I could also complete physical feats such as walking to class without stopping to hit the inhaler--I've never had asthma before this. In 20/20 hindsight, think I probably had mono.

So this brings me to my vacation. Ever since I demonstrated my body's ability to initiate an inflamatory self-destructive response of massive proportions the NP treated me promptly. Unfortunately she retired. So here I was, on vacation, descending downward into a slow, mucousy, wheezy death. Luckily, I've managed to develop the networking resources that I have practitioners willing to work me in and that know me well enough to give me the respect of near self diagnosis.

So I got my steroids. Now the problem. Steroids make me insane. So I've reached a point in my vacation of penetrating insomnia--hypomania if you will. But here's the catch. Some people become efficient and get a lot done--ideal for a vacation. Not me. My severe ADHD only allows me to do things such as sit in front of the TV and flip channels for an hour at a time, spend countless hours bouncing around the internet, or starting tasks and only partially completing them before moving on to another.

Oh well. I suppose only a jack ass would complain about being on vacation. Especially since I just learned on the National Geographic Channel that the sun will one day become a white dwarf and LIFE WILL END!