Bakersfield Bacteria
All is well with me and SB :) :) :)
Bakersfield is halfway between us, so a couple weeks ago we met there to spend the weekend together and it was lovely. Bakersfield, for those who don’t know, is a desert hellhole in the California Central Valley, but the La Quinta motel is very very nice and if all you want to do is stay in bed with your sweetheart all weekend, Bakersfield is just fine.
However. A couple days after I got home, I noticed a lot of post-nasal drip, and then I developed a truly horrible debilitating cough. SB had some symptoms, too, but he’s very sturdy and they went away quickly. I am extremely fragile and the cough got really bad, keeping me up for hours every night.
A couple days ago I had an appt with my wonderful primary care doctor, Dr. Nguyen, for other reasons – I’ve had a ton of strange symptoms lately — extreme fatigue, loss of appetite, gritty eyes, hands that fall asleep all the time… I suspected that I was hypothyroid, but my endocrinologist ran labs and said that I should cut back my Synthroid dose a little bit. This recommendation didn’t make sense to me (the test results indicated that I was a little bit hypo) so I asked him again to be sure, and then shrugged and followed directions.
My lovely lovely Dr. Nguyen ran a TON of labs to try to figure out what’s going on with me (I had eight vials of blood drawn on Monday) and SURE ENOUGH I’m even more hypothyroid than before! ARGH, so frustrating. I knew I was hypo, and my endocrinologist didn’t LISTEN to me. But Dr. Nguyen listens. He said I can go back to my old, higher dose of Synthroid and that he is happy to manage my thyroid so I don’t need to go back to the doc who doesn’t listen.
Also, I’m low on B12 and D. So the combination of B12 and D deficiency and hypothyroidism explains all of my recent strange symptoms, and it’s all easy to fix.
I asked him about this strange and horrible cough. I’d told him it started right after I want to Bakersfield and it all added up — he says there is bacteria hanging around Bakersfield (and the Central Valley) that causes just such a cough, especially in people with weak or compromised respiratory systems. (that’s me) So he prescribed an antibiotic. Unfortunately, the really good antibiotics clash with all my other meds, so he had to prescribe one that isn’t super effective but might work. I’m being very careful to follow the dosing directions to the letter, in hopes that it will increase the effectiveness. Exactly 12 hours apart, empty stomach, and no foods with a lot of calcium or iron within 3 hours of either side of Pill Time.
After two days of getting enough B12, D, and thyroid hormone, my appetite is already returning. Two days of antibiotics is probably not enough time for them to work, but my cough seems a little less drastic already.
Thank goodness for doctors who listen.