This was not a good week for my physical health. I’d had a rash on my chest by my underarm for about a week which I had thought was just a rash. It started hurting last Sunday night which made me think it was not just a rash. When I told my GF about it the next day she said it was probably shingles. My GF is a nurse and got her friend who is a nurse practitioner to look at it and she agreed that it was shingles. Although the shingles was annoying and caused me to lose some sleep I could deal with it and work through it.
Tuesday the plan was to get my shingles prescription after I got off work. After lunch Tuesday I started to feel unwell. I ended up leaving work about an hour early and by the time I got home I was sick as a dog. I had a fever, nausea, chills, aches, and fatigue. Looking at shingles symptoms I saw that it could cause flu-like symptoms so I figured that was what I was experiencing. This was worse than any flu than I’d had for many years though.

I didn’t get much sleep that night and in the morning I felt even worse. I decided I needed to tell my GF another symptom I was experiencing. It really hurt when I peed. This is not something you want to tell your GF. 🙂 Since I knew it couldn’t be an STD we figured it must be a urinary tract infection and I started taking an antibiotic for this infection.
Having shingles and a UTI seems bad enough but things were actually worse. After taking the antibiotic Wednesday and Thursday I felt only a little better on Friday. My GF decided I should go to her office so she could run a urinalysis which confirmed I had an infection and that it looked more serious than just a UTI. Her doctor sent me to get some blood work done which confirmed I had prostatitis. I’d never heard of it before, but it is a bacterial infection of the prostate which can be pretty serious. With the new diagnosis we switched to a different antibiotic and it seems to be working.
My theory is that these illnesses all started with my oral surgery a couple of weeks prior. The dentist prescribed me a steroid to keep the inflammation down. One side effect of the steroid is that it can weaken your immune system. Apparently, it really weakened mine. When I have my dental implants done later this year I will be sure to let them know I do not want to take a steroid.
Although I was off work three days I didn’t get any blogging or much of anything else done. I felt so bad I all I wanted to do was sleep or sit on the couch and watch TV. Now that I’m feeling almost normal again I should have a better week this week.