smith101's Journal

I have heard of tonsils described as many things when inflamed. The most glamorous being they are wearing red dresses with polka dots. But in all truth and reality they look more like the raw gonads of a 800lbs gorrilla.

Late Sunday night I had my first injection of Enbrel. Just for this occasion I had locked myself up in the house Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I figured I would have no clue how my body would react to it and I wanted to minimize any contact with germs.

I will admit I was scarred to take it but at the chance of becoming a ballerina it was worth it. Yes many have proclaimed this is a miracle drug and what would be more of a miracle then it turning this 244 lbs woman into a ballerina?

At that you may say perhaps it would be more likely for it to turn you into the vertically challenged opera singer at the end of a show. But hahha ha on you.  That would be even more of a miracle then a ballet dancer if you’ve ever heard me sing!

Well, about 16 hours after injecting Enbrel I had two royally inflamed tonsils, which from here on will be refereed to as gorrilla gonads. They were so inflamed the gorilla was walking like John Wayne. I couldn’t swallow Tylenol's. I had to crush them to get them to pass.

That was Monday night. Tuesday I ran a slight temp., although the clinic doesn’t qualify it as one as it was only 99.2 and apparently it needs to be 99.6 for it to "officially" be a temp. Then again they don’t seem to believe me when I say I usually hang out at 98.1 so bitterness is going their way.

I also ended up having to test every 2 hours to get my sugar levels beneath 300. I ended up tripling my basel rates and finally after testing at 2:00AM and seeing a reading of 307mg/dl, doing a correction bolus of 15 units and no food, testing again at 4:00AM I showed a 335mg/dl on my glucose monitor.

Throwing all caution to the wind I said <insert sailor mouth comments here> and took the warnings off my pump and bolused 50 units. That’s greater then what I normally use in a single day! I tested at 6:00AM and found myself at 152mg/dl. Wow only twice that of a normal human. Sigh.

Wednesday comes and I am still sucking down insulin as if I'm a crack head that hasn't had their hit this week, my gorilla gonads are itchy, and I’m sweating more then whore in the red light district.

So I call up rheumatology and leave all my signs and symptoms and get - nothing. So I call late in the afternoon around hoping they will say come in we’ll check you out and give you some drugs. But NO.

Thursday morning comes and still no call from rhuematology. I call them and they say oh we tried to catch him but couldn't reach him yet.  I'll mark it urgent and have him call you as soon as he can.  I have trace keytones.  I could be on the verge of going DKA (note rhuematologists and endocrinologist smust never share drinks at the company Christmas party as this did not phase the brainless thing answering the phone).

My internal response not voiced on the phone mostly due to the fact the gonads are hugging each other - Uh no.  You are now officially on my dip wad list.  I will get help.

I call my general and they say come on in, but since I have no "fever" no one is worried and thinks I just have a sore throat. Hell, the only thing keeping me from the ER was I wasn’t throwing up! Can we say DKA?

So I get to family medicine and I could just hug this doc. He is the one who finally noticed hey your joints are randomly flaring it might be RA. He doesn’t talk much, but his eyes have sincere sympathy, and he seems initially "slow" but really I think it’s just he is processing everything you say versus thinking I wonder who got kicked of Idol last night.

At any rate he takes one quick look at my throat and says strep. That these were indeed the worst gorilla gonads he’s seen this year and including last year’s cold season. He apologizes about having to do a culture but says that the drones in Rheumatology won’t believe just a general practitioners diagnosis.

So I call Rheumatology and guess what - he was right! They said they wouldn’t do anything until the results were back. Well guess what. I already have thanks to Dr. Do Good a prescription for antibiotics.

I can’t believe after being penned up in my cage for 3 days before with only contact with fur face and my BIL who both still have zero signs of strep that this is NOT somehow related to that Enbrel injection.

I don't recall ever having strep before in my life. This whole experience is bringing me closer to throwing fecal matter at my Rheumatologist as well. Perhaps it’s from sprouting raw gorilla gonads. Perhaps it’s because you can NOT let a diabetic go 24 hours without answering her calls!!!

Even though I was far from dying this time around I can’t help but think if I would have I would have loved to be reincarnated as a crow. Then I’d be able to hunt down the Rheumatologists who didn’t respond even after keytones were mentioned and crap every day on their BMW’s!

Well me and the gorilla gonads are going to bed grumpy and all.