Neverending Story

No not the neat movie with a flying dragon and a stupid horse. It doesn’t pale in comparison to the past 3 days. So. For starters I went back to the oral surgeon last Monday who pulled the drill bit out of my jaw. From what he says things “look” ok, however he immediately went into defense mode of the periodontist who put it there. “Oh there was no infection around the drill bit”. Dude. I’ve been hospitalized and was on countless antibiotics by the time you got to it. 

We did some small talk regarding porcelain implants / on all four, however, I don’t think implants are for me. At least my first experience was pretty telling on how much my body doesn’t want them. 

I did I however explain to him something doesn’t feel right in my chin and cheeks. At the time the pain and irritation was pretty mild, however, the sweats are starting to come back. 

By Wednesday, the mild feeling began to feel moderate. I kept staring at the lab results from the culture I did. The yeast infection or “growth” has shown up in every single culture done. Between the culture 2 years ago, to the shit out of my face 2 weeks ago, and the 2 others in between. It got me thinking. I mean it’s almost like this is starting to worsen.

So last year my oral surgeon put me in itraconazole for it. That’s when my leg started to swell so I immediately stopped it. It was the first time I had taken it so I didn’t know at the time. So I just put it away in my stash. So with the data on the labs and just my overall feeling of this sucks. I started back up. 200mg a day. After day 1, I was absolutely fucking miserable. The sweats had started to worsen. I just felt … sick. Nauseated. My stomach just was not happy at all. Good thing I had leftover Zofran, it took away the nausea for the most part. 

Thursday I woke up to a familiar feeling. Yeah.  Another kidney stone. As I woke up I said “you gotta be fucking kidding me”. On top of my face starting to hurt more, I’m going to wrong way. Again. On top of the pain, the all too familiar metallic taste is back in my mouth along with “that smell”. It’s hard to describe the smell. It’s like. Musty. Off-putting. Semi-nauseating. As I went to the bathroom I was quickly reminded that the pain I was feeling on my left side right to the small of my back was definitely a kidney stone. As I started, the blood was there. Followed up by the “I’m peeing gasoline” feeling is back. Jesus. Why the fuck. Well I guess we can officially count this as kidney kid #9. The only thing I could hope for was that I can pass it. 

Reason I knew this was coming was because in January I had an abdominal CT at Mayo. Showed 2 3mm stones left side. So it was really only a matter of time. 

As I sat in my chair and logged into work, the pain went from a 2 to about 9.5 quick. I got out of my chair and just rolled around on the floor. Holy fuck. If anyone has had one you know exactly what I am experiencing. It’s pain on a whole other level. I quickly took my morphine and a zofran. If it was like anything before, I know the pain would get out of control fast, and I really didn’t want to start dry heaving from it either. This time I’m experienced in dealing with them. At the same time, my face isn’t feeling any better. By Friday things got worse. 

My face is starting to burn again. My cheeks feel swollen near the jawline. I can feel cysts, or nodules in my ears and face. I managed to squeeze out yet another pus filled cyst on my neck. It just kept coming and coming with no end in sight. As Anies watched on, she saw how much came out. However this time I didn’t have any culture sticks with amies gel. So there would be really no point in culturing this as how difficult my gp was last time with it. Hopefully my culture sticks show up this week. Throughout the rest of the day, my face just hurt. On top of the kidney stone, and the smell, I’m just miserable. Plus with the antifungal, yay. 

Saturday came and the misery continued. I started to feel what I could only describe as a cyst in my right cheek on the inside. I could feel the pus / lump in my face. Kinda gross. So. 3 weeks of augmentin, and no joy. The enterococcus Faecalis that grew, which showed susceptible to penecillin, didn’t work. Or maybe started to then stopped. The return of my heartbeat in my chin is back. On top of my cheek feels like somethings “filling it up”. 

I decided to head to Urgent Care. Something is wrong. The usual fill this out, and wait. This place is actually pretty good. And it’s also close. Didn’t wait long this time. As the PA came in. The usual explain my CVID, fill her in on the drill bit / removal, but kept her focused on the lab results. As I told her I do t think the penecillin is working, yeah there is Vanco … Not gonna get that there lol. So we tried Moxifloacillin. It’s one antibiotic I’ve never done. Wikem showed it as effective, but I don’t know how much. As I sat and waited, Walgreens took 4 hours to fill 10 pills. Yeah. Pharmacies I’ll save for another rant. By the time the wife got there, closed. So I had to call another Walgreens to fill. “Give me an hour”.  As I sat and waited I researched more. The visit diagnosis was facial cellulitis. I’m gonna get another appt with my dermo to have him take a second look, possibly send me to the good infectious disease folks next door to St. Luke’s. 

Linezolid. The big gun. As I read into a study where it was used alternatively w/ 100% cure. It piqued my interest. I sat and looked at the wife and said. I can either start it now, or just be disappointed with this new drug by day 3. So fuck it. I have 30 days of Linezolid in my stash. Yeah. This was the one Walgreens fucked up on. So I opened the boxes and took the first blister pack out, along with a bottle I had with 3 pills left. As I read, standard dosing is 600mg twice a day. 10,14 or 28 day courses. Since I have 30 pills, I’ll do 14. It’s half of what I have. And yes let me remind you. This is the antibiotic that cost my insurance $2,800 when I previously goodrx’d it for $137. 

Big pharma. 

So tonight my body just feels like it’s constantly fighting something in my face. The pain comes and goes in my face. The tingling, the pulsing just keeps reminding me somethings wrong. I opted to start taking the facial steroid which at this point I think it’s just a pacifier … but it does take the burning / pain feeling down some. I just wish my body would stop going fucking apeshit. Kinda gets old. As we went out to Whole Foods, no more I made it in the door I almost dropped to my knees. The stone started to move. And Jesus it just hurts. What would have been a visit to just walk around and look at everything, became more of a quick in out visit. Near the tail end I caved and took another morphine (I took one when we left). 

We got home and I became paralyzed on the couch. It’s definitely hurting more and more. If I remember right, once it gets to the pelvic region it’s gonna get much worse. 

I can only hope that the tamulsin will help on top of the pain meds. These things are satan. To my surprise whoever, upon my research into this macros, I came across 2 studies where Linezolid and Azoles were used to determine if Linezolid was synergistic (enhances effectiveness), and I read that Linezolid will help the eradication factor of all yeasts. So here is hoping that helps me get rid of whatever is clearly in my face. 

Ps. Work is going better. I am definitely slowing down and looking at everything vs my old ways of just do it. For the past 2weeks at work I’ve been focusing a lot of my time and effort into

Getting the engineers acquainted with multicast.  It’s pretty essential to learn, however, most people like your common end user is never gonna use or understand how it works. 

So I’ve been reaching out to every engineer in hopes that I can spark something.  A throught. A definition, a mechanic. Something that tells me what hmm this is finds cool I wanna know more. 

I’ve decided to directly approach the team with these types of one on ones. Where I can cover content. Trying to  get some sort of technical “ah-hah” where I’ve connected the dots and they are now able to see a better approach or definition into it. I cannot express how much I love teaching. It’s pretty fulfilling should you get someone to just “get” it. It’s elating and exciting at the same time to have them start asking even better questions than before. This is the point where I think I’ve planted that seed. In hopes of them becoming self sustaining engineers

Making better choices based on fact. What they are seeing. Etc. it’s my job to show them the game and how to play it. Starting to give them better detail between the two. 

More about this later. Between the ambien and the kidney stone it’s just a matter of time it will left me shutdown for the night.