Wow I feel like death.

Not the kind of death that means today death, but the kind of death that means I better get myself on a better course immediately.

I’ve been putting off taking my blood pressure over the last few days, because I really didn’t want to deal with bad news and I was hoping I would just start to feel better.

Finally today I woke up and thought to myself, ‘ya know, I probably should check it…I might need to go to the hospital…’

So I checked it, but what really surprised me was there was a big difference in the two arms.

Then I laid in bed for twenty more minutes, and checked it again, and it was the same in both arms—approx 20 point difference.

I think I’m probably septic with either something that these meds aren’t covering (which is hard to imagine what I’m not covering), or (more likely), it’s a problem brewing from my compliance issues.

Meaning the antibiotics I have can fight whatever it is that’s bothering me, I just need to be super diligent about taking them.

In an ideal world, I should probably take my blood pressure machine to the ER, get admitted and have the super cool team that helped me last time work me up. I should probably maybe even take a day off of all of my antibiotics to try and get a positive blood culture (it’s hard to get a positive blood culture even before antibiotic therapy begins), so I can just to find out what this bug is,

but we don’t live in a perfect world because I have no desire to go to the ER today, no matter how deathly ill I’m feeling, until I’ve tried more of my options here at home.

So today’s attempt: super compliance.

(If I have to live at home with a bunch of pills and IV bags next to a clock to be compliant, then that’s what it takes.)

If in twenty four hours that doesn’t working, and there’s a super big different in my blood pressure,

Then I’m going to call my doctor and switch to IV Vancomycin. Try that for 3-4 days.

(Maybe this blood pressure problem is coming from something from my leg not healing right.)

Then in 3-4 days, if Vanco doesn’t work, then I’ll head to the ER cuz if none of the above work then I’m in super serious trouble 😢.

(There’s always a chance this could be fungal or something else really funky, but since I’ve walked down this path in the past I want to rule out the usual suspects first…)

Of course if it gets even worse over the next few days, then I’m headed straight to the ER. I probably should be going now anyway, but I prefer to avoid the hospital as much as possible…

(Left arm)

(Right arm)

My leg, still healing from the piece of skin taking out a month ago: