Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Enbrel + Flu

Since I started taking Enbrel, I've noticed that when I get sick, it hits like a ton of bricks. This flu I had last week? Oh man, it was horrible. With one hour of feeling my first symptom, I was shivering and near delirium. Four days passed and I swear I slept for 90% of them, eating maybe two pieces of bread.  Emails may have been written, but I had no idea what was said. There was apparently one email that made it out whose title got auto-corrected to "Still Sucky" - that one was to my boss. I had crazy fever dreams where I miraculously solved all my students projects, but now have no grasp of what ideas actually came up. There was even a point where I could only see in 2-D. Not kidding.

This Enbrel has just shut down my immune system, and when I get sick, I just succumb. No work gets done. Not even email-checking. My husband managed to get me to the doctor, shovel all the right meds into me at the right times, run the house, take care of the kids… he is a hero. And now I am mostly better, but I can't sleep because I just slept for four days straight. And I'm thinking about how much it sucks to be sick like this, but how much more it would suck to not take Enbrel. Did you know that there is apparently muscles in your ass that you use for sleeping? Because my ass muscles are sore from laying down.