Having a chronic illness complicates every illness
This isn’t supposed to scare, mostly just a rant for myself.
Last month I started having what I assumed to be a “chronic illness flare”: extreme fatigue, vertigo, migraines, joint pain, high heart rate + respiratory rate, nausea, etc. I have POTS, gastroparesis, CCI/TCS, MCAS, Idiopathic Hypersomnia, and literally every other illness that would explain this.
After about a week, I developed a low-grade fever (not uncommon for me because of dysautonomia). I decided to go to my student health center to be safe and because there was a brief moment where I felt like I might have pneumonia (I’ve had it 3x). The doctor listened to my lungs and looked at my throat and everything seemed fine. She was great and ran a bunch of labs (even for Lyme!) and everything seemed close to normal.
The next day I told her I felt like I couldn’t breathe, but only when I was laying down at night. She insisted on a chest x-ray but I genuinely felt like I was getting better. Flash forward 4 hours and I have a 104 F fever, a resting HR of 150, and a respiratory rate of 32. Urgent care sent me to ER where I was diagnosed with pneumonia (for the 4th time) AND LITERALLY SEPSIS WITH HYPOXIC TISSUES!!!!
We literally can never catch a break but also having a chronic illness makes it so hard to tell if it’s an acute problem that needs immediate attention😭 I’m supposed to have surgery for TCS in 1.5 weeks and now it might get canceled because of the recent infection. I WANT A NORMAL IMMUNE SYSTEM PLEASE!!!