My Wonderful Summer Vacation! Where I almost kinda could have died

Summer 2007 can be summed up in one word: Suckfest. Add another one: Giant Suckfest.

I know there are millions if not billions of people on this planet that had a worse three month span than me, but in terms of my short twenty-five year life, this one ranks among the worst.

It started with so much promise. I was promoted at my job, to staff supervisor at another law firm that my company does outsourcing for. I was jacked. More money, more prestige, a sense of worth and accomplishment. I was looking forward to all of that. Plus, Rose and I were about to set off for our yearly summer vacation, this time we went on a road trip through New England.

The vacation was awesome. Quite simply, the best vacation I ever had. We spent a week seeing the amazing scenery of the Adirondacks. We got some ice cream and maple syrup (and saw plenty of dirty hippies) in Vermont. We laid on the beach in Hyannis. We saw Boston and New York City. It was definitely one of the best weeks of my life.

Of course, we came back into Detroit on June 20. Summer started the very next day. And it was all downhill from there.

I started my new job at the new place at the top of the Comerica Tower, Detroit's tallest office building. And it sucked. Hard. I was so miserable. And to make matters worse, I got shipped out to the firm's other office in Birmingham for the next month, which sucked even harder. I literally would stand in front of a copy machine for six to eleven hours a day, occasionally walking around with a mail cart. My feet hurt like I had walked a thousand miles. I was bitter and depressed. That job wasn't exactly the one I was promised. But I decided to keep up with it.

Independence Day is usually my favorite holiday of the year. Beautiful weather, barbequed food, maybe a volleyball game in the backyard. Not this year. Not only was Independence Day on a Wednesday, but I was too exhausted and bitter and depressed to enjoy any part of it.

I tried to keep up my spirits in the office, but that proved to be quite the difficult task. At home, it was even worse. I was a bear to be around. Rose couldn't stand me. Bless her heart, she did all she could for me, but there was no warming my soul. I was prepared to give it all up.

July 2007 ranks right up there as one of the worst months of my life. And around the end of that month, I thought all my bad times were behind me. My bosses decided that my talents were being wasted at the job, so they decided to transfer me back to the job I loved. And then they decided to promote me there and give me a slightly bigger raise than the one they gave me originally. And then, Rose and I received word that we could move into our new house on the 28th.

I was on top of the world. I was sure that July was just an aberration, that August would be much better. I finally had it. I finally was living the life that I though I would never live. Beautiful wife. Great job. Our own house in a great neighborhood. It was all finally coming together. Little did I know my misfortunes were just beginning.

Moving is stressfull for everyone, and I am no exception. It took a toll on me mentally and physically. I was beat in both aspects. The one thing that I kept noticing was that the pain in my feet (you remember, from standing in front of a copy machine all damn day) stuck around. In fact, they felt worse. My shins and ankles hurt too, badly. It wasn't easy to walk. But we had just finished moving, so I figured it was all the stress of lifting and carrying everything. I'm not exactly in prime phsyical condition.

But during the next week, they got worse. My feet still hurt. My ankles had swelled up to the size of softballs. I started to get a little concerned. I had chills. I was running a fever. This isn't normal I told myself, and decided to run to the doctor. I was diagnosed with an infection. She said it looked like cellulitis, but cellulitis doesn't usually affect both legs. She prescribed me some antibiotics and I was on my way.

It didn't get better. Two days later (Saturday, August 4), Wow! came over to install the cable, and my legs were candy-apple red and painful. It was a nice, breezy, sunny day. We turned the air off and opened the windows. It was about 80 degrees that day. My parents and siblings came over that afternoon to check out what our house looked like with all of our stuff put away. Imagine their shock when they saw me wrapped in a flannel blanket looking pale and sickly. My mom, being the mom that she is, took my temperature, a warm 100.5. Immedietly the brain trust stirred into action, and it was decided by my mother and my wife that I was going to the urgent care place. An hour later they took my temperature, an even warmer 101.6. The doctor there said it was certainly cellulitis, and told us to get over to the ER right away.

We pulled into BiCounty hospital, and I fully waited to be there awhile. Nobody gets out of the ER in any short amout of time. When I walked in, there was only one other guy waiting. They took me in to do the prescreen, and they too took my temperature. 102.7. They didn't waste any time, and took me into my "room" immedietly. What followed was six hours of tests and waiting and tests and waiting (I even had an ultrasound done on my legs, which was an interesting expereince). Everybody there was great. The Resident ER doc reminded me of Elliot Reid from "Scrubs." My nurse, a big, built extreme-sport loving kind of guy, hooked me up with an i.v. I had a bit of a headache, and he returned with a vile full of morphine. "I would have been fine with some Tylenol," I said. "We take care of our patients here," he replied with a grin.

Long story short, they admitted me, and I spent the next two nights (not) sleeping on a very uncomfortable bed, watching piss-poor weekend hospital television, with the roommate from hell. My family spent a lot of time with me, which helped, but those two days were the longest two days.

I went home on Monday with a new antibiotic, and high hopes for a speedy recovery. I explained my situation to my boss, and he was more than sympathetic to my problem. I was on ordered rest with legs elevated. I didn't leave the couch for days.

Cellulitis, for those of you who don't know, is a bacterial infection of the fatty cells underneath the skin, usually caused by errant bacteria who just happen to find themselves around an open wound. It causes symptoms that, in me anyway, resembled something along the lines of a severely sprained ankle, shin spints, and heavily swollen feet. As long as my feet were elevated, I was fine. I could feel some pressure around my ankles, but no real pain. Real pain, and I mean tears-rolling-down-your-face pain occured the minute I put any pressure on my legs, as the blood and fluids streamed into the area and didn't move back.

As that week progressed, I looked a little better and I felt a little better, but not as good as I had hoped. I still had a fever. I still was getting chills alternating with hot flashes. My apetite was non existant. I started to panic a little bit. On Friday, I went back to my doctor, who was displeased at my lack of progress. She did a little research, and told me of the possiblity of a misdignosis (unfortunately not of the malpractice kind). It may not have been cellulitis, but instead a condition that sounds more like a Harry Potter spell, erythema nadosum, which is an inflimation of the skin cells caused by a wide variety of causes. Mine was a bacterial infection of unkown origin (nobody still can answer that question even to this day). She prescribed me an anti-inflamitory to compliment my antibiotic, and told me to lay down for another week.

No problem, I thought, I can get short-term disability through my employer. Of course, I only found out after jumpind through all the hoops that I didn't quite qualify for the benefit, as I had not been there a full year (the day I returned to work, August 20, was exactly 51 weeks after I had started, and they would not budge). So to top off the heavy expenses of this mystery illness, I also wasn't getting paid.

Fortunately, Rose really picked up the slack, and I owe her so much for all she did for us that month that I was for all intents and purposes incapacitated. She picked up more hours and did an incredible amount of work on the house, more or less all by herself.

I finally received a clean bill of health and returned to work on August 20. The only bright spot in this lousy summer was my birthday, that following Sunday the 26th, where Rose and I saw the Tigers pound the Yankees, experienced the Indian Festival at Hart Plaza, had some Ben and Jerry's at Campus Martius, and then had a (semi)surprise birthday celebration with my friends and family at the Hard Rock. In that awful span from the end of June through the end of August, that day was one of the best of my life. Once again, all seemed good...

...and they still are. Ha!

My doctors didn't really tell me all of this, and I didn't find this out until afterward. Of course, they wouldn't put any worry or anxiety in my head, but I found out that my strep numbers were through the roof, and with that kind of bacterial infection as serious as it was (and I had no idea how serious it was at that time), I was only a short time away from the bacteria entering the blood stream and putting my life in jeapordy. I realized that I was in the hospital for two days, not solely because they wanted to keep the i.v. in to speed up the healing process, but to ensure that I didn't go septic. I realized later that the nurses kept a close eye on me, checking my legs for any red streaks, taking my vitals every 30 to 60 minutes. If my family hadn't come over that Saturday afternoon, I don't know what could have happened to me.

It's really scary, that point in your life when you realize for the first time that you are, in fact, not indestructable.