I started taking ibuprofen the other day because I got a case of hives and intense joint pain. Turns out you don’t use ibuprofen for hives. Anyway, over a period of a few days, I was covered from head to heel with hives and extreme pain in all my joints. Went to the doctor twice, diagnosed with hives but they didn’t know what was causing the joint pain. I got some Tylenol/codeine but that didn’t help. When my throat started tightening up, I ended up in the hospital for three days. I was diagnosed with Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome where the body causes the response because of some internal infection. The joint pain was a sudden onset of Rheumatoid Arthritis. Morphine did nothing for the pain so I was put on steroids (Prednisone). Unfortunately, my Blood Glucose rose to 390+ and was put on insulin. It also raised my blood pressure and resting heart rate from my normal of 45-60 BPM to 70-90 BPM. It also triggered my Atrial Fibrillation which has been constant since Thursday. The problem with this is when your heart rate goes over 120 BPM, it can trigger a heart attack or stroke. Just getting up and going to the bathroom raises it over 120, and to go up stairs for bed, even with rests each third of the way up, sets me well over 140 BPM. Luckily, it recovers fast. While in the hospital, to determine what the infection is, they drew over 60 vials of blood and are testing for everything: environmental, biological, infectious diseases, viral – everything. They are also testing for what I may have picked up in any of nine countries I visited in northern Europe at the end of June, as well as what could have been transmitted by any of hundreds of visitors from all over the world that I may have come in contact with flying for about 24 hours to and from Europe, as well as 3,500 passengers on a cruise ship. Why couldn’t it be peanuts?

Anyway, I have appoints with my Cardiologist, Rheumatologist and Medical Doctors this week. Hopefully they can figure something out soon, this is kind of a bummer.