Medical Maze

As tradition has it, Jillian continues to battle more than her share of medical ups and downs. So it turns out that no matter how hard she works out in the gym, her path is peppered with setbacks. I'm glad she continues to take it all in stride, but I wish it didn't have to be this hard for her.

Today she will return to the gym after being out for almost 2 weeks. She started with a viral infection that wouldn't go away. When we returned to the doctor, she was treated for strep, even though her strep test was negative. Her throat was obviously infected with "something". She improved slightly and was able to sneak in one day at the gym. However, that night she came home with a terrible headache.

This turned into the Heachache that would not stop. Twenty-four hours a day for four days her head hurt so bad she would not lift it off the pillow. Returning to the doctor again, we were elated to receive Tylenol 3 because I had tried every combination of pain meds I had at home with no success. We believed we had the cure.

The headache responded t Tylenol 3 by easing up for exactly one hour. Then it came back in full force. The next morning Jillian would not even open her eyes. She and I could not believe this pain was continuing for so long. She was discouraged and I was at my wit's end.

I called our doctor back and she said there wasn't much else she could do and that we should go to the Emergency Room. When we checked in there, Jillian rated her pain as a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst pain you could imagine.

She was given Toradol, and after 40 minutes her pain was only down to a 7. She had blood work and a CT scan. The doctor then explained to us that their concern was that she had meningitis and that the antibiotic she was taking for her throat might be masking the more serious symptoms with the headache being the breakthrough clue.

They could not, in good conscious, let us leave until they were sure. That meant they had to do a lumbar puncture, a spinal tap. Jillian was scared, and it really hurt her, but she was a trooper. She stayed very still and did everything they said. She received 4 doses of morphine, and six needles in her back. They had a hard time getting the fluid so they had to try three times.

After this procedure she had to lay flat for 48 hours. The side effect of having a lumbar puncture.....is a HEADACHE. Fortunately, Jillian said the headache she got from lifting her head was entirely different and the morphine had finally knocked out what must have been a horrendous migrane stemming from the infection she had a week ago.

By now she is back to normal with just a little back soreness. She will go back to the gym today and she is a little worried that he coach won't remember how long she has been out and expect her to be able to do everything. To be honest, I don't know what she can and cannot do. She hasn't missed this much gym in a long time.

So we started a journal and I'm encouraging her to write down all her feelings and we are coming up with some practical ways to approach her worries, as well as ways to chart the progress she makes over the next couple weeks.

Countdown to first meet is 8 weeks.