Carol Parker said:What kind of symptoms are we talking about here, and how on earth did the virus end up hitting your heart?
Well, it went like this...
It all kicked off with chest pain... I had this heavy, hacking cough and honestly felt like my lungs were just filled with tar (I am a smoker, after all). I felt terrible. Just completely wiped out. After about two or three days, I ran a low-grade fever of around 99°F. It wasn't massive, but I figured I was coming down with the flu, so I grabbed some Advil Cold & Sinus—better safe than sorry, right?
The very next day, I couldn't even get out of bed. Standing up? Forget it. Even getting to the bathroom was impossible. I ended up at the ER, where they hooked me up to an IV and sent me home. That happened twice—two days in a row. Their EKG showed absolutely nothing.
Then came the next day, and I was completely incapacitated. I couldn't breathe; I felt like I was suffocating. Overnight, my temperature plummeted to 95°F. Back to the hospital I went. They gave me another IV (I guess they think that’s a magic fix for everything) and then put me on oxygen. My heart rate was racing between 140 and 160 beats per minute... blood pressure was sitting at 90/60. They were suspecting a pulmonary embolism or maybe septic shock. An ultrasound revealed fluid around my heart... and some kind of thickening of a wall, about 3 cm. Over in surgery, they inserted those little catheters into my veins to manage my venous pressure... if I remember correctly, it was either negative or extremely high... hmm... I went through it all: ultrasounds, two different MRIs, EMG tests, you name it.
I was on Decadron, though I honestly can't recall the exact dosage... looking back, I have no idea what all those pills were. They finally discharged me after three weeks. It took until the second week before I could even walk to the bathroom on my own (I was stuck with that annoying catheter). During that first week, I couldn't even hold a spoon, let alone lift it.
My discharge papers listed these diagnoses:
myocarditis ac.susp.
polymyositis vs.virosa ac.
pericarditis ac.exudativa virosa
They took some blood samples and sent them off to a lab—think somewhere like Quest Diagnostics—and now I'm just waiting on the results. They were testing for adenovirus, influenza, Coxsackie, and Echo viruses...
So, that's my story for now.
Sorry if that was a massive wall of text... I'm really hoping there's someone else here who has dealt with something similar so we can compare notes.
Best,
Oh, and P.S.—right after they ruled out the pulmonary embolism, the first diagnosis they threw at me was cardiomyopathy. Absolutely terrifying...
