Journal Bill Dog's Journal: Ow my balls [extensive medical whining] 10
It's 3:45 am. I won't be going to sleep tonite. I laid down a little before 2 am, but the pain is driving me out of my freaking mind. Every nite I read a little before bed, by a dim 25 watt un-eco-friendly kind of light bulb, to help me get sleepy. I didn't realize that I'd gotten thru all of 6 pages in that time. Utterly ridiculous. I've been on 3 Advils (200 mg Ibuprofen each) twice a day for about 10 days now, and I took it earlier today and got some relief but I took my second dose after (a late) dinner tonite at about 9 pm, and this time it's just not doing diddly for me.
And I'm hesitant to take more because the bottle says to not exceed 6 pills in 24 hours. Not to mention not to take it for more than 10 days. Ibuprofen carries the risk of stomach bleeding, evidently. I'm not too worried about that. A couple or three years ago I developed a condition where my stomach began a daily ritual of producing waaay too much acid. I do like spicy foods once or twice a week, like Kung Pao Chicken or Thai Spicy Noodles. It got to be that I was burping up acid like on the days I lifted weights. And then later on it progressed to no longer waiting to be triggered by exertion, and would wake me up in the middle of the night with a burning throat. So I started taking Costco brand Ranitidine (the generic for Zantac). I started out taking them the preferred way, before a meal as a preventative.
That worked for almost a year but then became much less effective, and I switched to taking it after a meal at the first hint of that stomach acid feeling. Which seemed to work better for a while. At this point I think I must've had lesions in the lining of my stomach walls and/or esophagus, because anything spicy or anything even slightly greasy like an Arby's sandwich would give an uncomfortable ache in and sour taste/smell coming from my stomach. So I went to my Internal Medicine doc and he put me on prescription Omeprazole (generic for Prilosec). I began taking that every day, and it took a month but that feeling of sensitivity to spicy hot or greasy foods, like it was rotting my stomach away, went away, and I felt like a new man and young again. After about 9 months I cut back to taking it every other day, and while slightly less effective, it's doing fine by me. Especially considering where I was.
And if I pop an occasional Excedrin for a headache, I never take it on an empty stomach, so I don't think I'm too vulnerable to stomach bleeding, and that part of me feels to be in pretty good shape. But I can't remember exactly how early in the morning I took my penultimate dose of Advil. And now I think I need to bump it up to 4 pills. My dad has some prescription Ibuprofen from a recent knee surgery that are 800 mg tablets, that says he can take them up to three times a day as needed for pain. So evidently 2400 mg per day is permissible under a doctor's program. But maybe not after having already been on it for 10 days. (And for 10-day periods in recent, preceding months.)
So New Year's Eve eve I go to Urgent Care at my local clinic with terrible pain. It felt like someone had kicked me in the balls, and then was squeezing my left ball in a vise grip. I.e. the cramping feeling, plus shooting pain starting in the testicle and radiating up my groin. I was diagnosed with epididymitis. This is inflammation of the epididymis, which is "a curved structure at the back of the testicle in which sperm matures and is stored". When Urgent Care doc had me by the balls, literally, he pinpointed it exactly there -- a little on the outside and a little towards the back. I was prescribed 14 days of Ciproflaxin (anti-biotic) and Naproxen (generic for Aleve (pain alleviator and anti-inflammatory)).
That seemed to clear it up, but it came back 5-7 days later. I called a Urology dept. and begged to be seen that day, as I was big-time in pain. I got some old guy who was nice enough to squeeze me in, but didn't give me straight answers and kept things really vague. He put me on 10 days of Doxycycline (with a few refills, as he said sometimes it could take more treatment) and Advils. Less than a week after completion of the 10 days, I wasn't feeling completely cured like after the 14 days of Cipro, so I did another 10.
5-7 days after completing that regimen it flared up again. On a weekend. Called into my (Internal Medicine) doctor's office, and the on-call Int. Med. guy didn't want to advise me, so gave me to an on-call Uro doc (a younger guy in the same office as old man Uro doc) who said let's try a non-generic anti-biotic this time, as those can be more potent. He put me on 10 days of Levaquin. (Under my old employer's prescription plan (via COBRA), my co-pay was $25 for this puppy instead of the usual $7.) Curiously, this was directed to be taken only once a day.
Since this was getting ridiculous, I made an appt. with my regular doctor, and he concurred with the prescription, asked if it was 500 mg or 750 (it was 500), and said he would think more like 20 to 30 days of it, and gave me the prescription for the next 10 follow-up, to start. He also said that given that my condition has been responding to anti-biotics, the infection diagnosis seems likely. And he said that he does treat this condition, as part of his practice. Also about this time I was thinking that maybe the anti-biotics really weren't clearing me completely up, and maybe the 10 days of pain killers/anti-inflams I had been taking concurrently were maybe masking this. So I weaned myself off the Ibuprofens within a week of starting this new anti-biotic.
It is of the fluoroquinolone family, that incidently Cipro is also in. Wikipedia says resistence to these can evolve rapidly, even during a course of treatment. It failed spectacularly on the 19th day with a massive sudden flare-up. (Actually I was kind of happy to get off of it -- with quinolone's you can apparently get soreness and potential tearing of the Achilles tendon, and I had been developing noticeable, constant aching there while on this particular one.) I call into my doc (on a Friday -- these have been migrating toward this kind of terrible timing) and he switches me to a whopping 21 days of Sulfameth/Trimethoprim pills. These are apparently two different anti-biotics combined into one pill. Same thing, I get myself off massive dosing of Ibuprofen within about a week, and with these I start to feel major relief like after the Cipro. Oh, and my Int. Med. doc says better go see a Urologist (I don't think he knew that I had already).
The office ladies in Uro wouldn't let me get a second opinion there until I "followed up" with the old duffer, and pressured me into going for a scan before seeing him again. I figure at this point, since I'm apparently not a "normal" case, I might as well. I got a Scrotal Ultrasound. Luckily it was an actually quite hot tech who did it. She took about 25 minutes I'd say (they do both balls). Just as one would guess, you get goop smeared on your relevant part, and then they press this thing close onto your skin. Due to an insurance situation eff up (ex-employer outsourced COBRA administration beginning of the year to a third-party company, who failed to maintain my coverage, despite receiving my premiums) I ended up scheduling it at the end of this round of antibiotics.
So of course I got a completely clean bill of health. <rolls eyes> It seems that's intended mostly to check for more serious things. Like apparently you can get a ball twisted around a major vein leading into it, and then said ball can die. Nope, not that, she said blood flow was fine, size was the same as the other (ya right -- my left one is obviously HUGEr), no sign of increased blood flow which would indicate infection. I was indeed feeling pretty cured at that point, with only some lingering soreness on that side of my left testicle, so when I went back to old man Uro doc the next day, he said basically goodbye and good luck.
That was on a Thursday. Scan Wed., Uro doc Thurs., and I happened to be seeing my regular doc that Fri. for some small, hard, painful lumps under my ear and neck and some jaw muscle pain (I'd heard that being on anti-biotics a long time can, among other things, screw with your salivary glands). On my ongoing condition, he said, looking at scan results and Uro doc's pronouncement of cured, that I'm cured. Knowing how things tend to go when you're me, I figure I better ask, well, what should I do in case it flares up again. Definitely call in, he says.
By the following Thursday, I'm calling in again, and thru the relaying nurse he says he doesn't know why it's not being beaten and puts me on 14 days of Cipro (don't know if he knew that's what I had originally been put on, or even if it matters). I'm 8 days into that, and been on Ibuprofens starting a couple of days before that, and I might've started feeling a little better around 4-6 days into it, but it now feels like it's utterly failing. So I guess later this morning I'll be calling in yet again on a weekend to an on-call doc, begging for any advice.
Since September of last year, I'll have been on 6 anti-biotics in less than 7 months. Last quarter last year I got sick (cold/flu symptoms, but I managed to dodge the piggy one) and better and sick and better and it kept coming back, and I was diagnosed with a sinus infection, and was prescribed 7 days of Clarithromycin. That worked wonders and I no longer felt sickly. For almost half a month, and then this condition happened. So I haven't lifted weights or otherwise exercised in about 7 months, subsequently I'm back up to 200 lbs (on a 5'7", small-boned frame).
Get a holistic doc (Score:1)
I ain't kidding either. You can do a *lot* with extreme diet analysis and changes, and the conventional docs get zero training in that. There are a lot of holistic docs out there now (especially in California) who have continued their training on their own and have both conventional and "natural" credentials.
Also see "Leviticus" food laws
Here's an example of a supremely healthy old geezer, read what he eats and does
http://www.jacklalanne.com/ [jacklalanne.com]
Did they do any bacterial labs? (Score:2)
And this probably already occurred to you, but I'll say it anyways. Going back to a previous antibiotic course isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you go first with drug A, th
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Oops, I had to forget something among all those details. Yes, the night I went to Urgent Care for this when it all started, they took a urine sample, and
1) Immediately checked it for any red blood cells in there (there were none), and
2) Cultured it over the next fews I guess to see if anything grew (I'm told that was clear).
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That said, I don't understand why they tested a urine sample when you went in with testicular pain. By my understanding urine doesn't pass through the scrotum. I think it would have made more sense for them to instead analyze your semen.
That's just my initial $.02 worth, provided for free.
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I received what was called a "clinical diagnosis". From an online medical dictionary: "A diagnosis made from a study of the signs and symptoms of a disease." (Another definition I found was: "A diagnosis made on the basis of knowledge obtained by medical history and physical examination alone, without benefit of laboratory tests or x-ray films.")
Urgent Care and later on Urology ran labs (urinalysis, ultrasound) to check for alternative, "more serious" conditions that could descend from the same or similar s
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Well so far, except for old guy Uro doc who's maybe past his interest in the career, every doctor I've seen has been very good, as far as I can tell. The problem is that I'm not a usual guy, so the things that are typically tried first that are usually expected to work don't in my case. But they have to try the "works in 99.9% of the cases" or whatever stuff first.
And there's been no economic pain -- my copays and portion of lab fees etc. I've been responsible for have been small (too small, in fact, to rea
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I've definitely heard some things negative that can occur from being on anti-biotics for extended periods. So I'd like to be on my last one, or last run-of-the-mill one at least, while I'm taking steps now to see about a Plan B and C. Unfortunately, we have a shortage of doctors in this country, so even with a PPO insurance plan, doesn't mean that you can always find someone willing to see you, and anytime soon at that, I'm finding out.
And it's not a perfect analogy, but for near- or far-sightedness for exa