You will remember, because it was only a week ago and we have not yet lost our minds though who could blame us if things were getting a little precarious, that about a week ago one of my feet swelled up for no reason. It swelled Friday evening, stayed swollen all Saturday, then unswelled by midday Sunday, leaving me feeling perkily relieved that I would not need to see a doctor after all, and that’s when I blogged about it. Then some of the comments on that post made me feel kind of panicky, so I decided what I would do is if my foot swelled AGAIN I would see a doctor.
Well. That’s so easy to say, when the foot isn’t swollen and one’s mood is confident and carefree as a result of feeling freshly grateful for painless walking. A week later, when my OTHER foot started swelling up, I wanted to wiggle out of that promise. I spent two hours trying to do so, but failed, particularly when the foot surpassed the level of swelling the first foot had achieved, and was seriously difficult to walk on—to the extent that I used my computer chair to roll myself to the bathroom before we left for Urgent Care. (I looked into doing a telemedicine appointment, but the screening questions left me pretty confident the doctor would want to take an actual look at this.)
The doctor at Urgent Care said he didn’t think it could be a blood clot. He said first of all, if it were a blood clot my leg would be hurting (it was not), but that also, it was Not A Thing to have a blood clot first cause swelling in one foot, and then the other. He found a large hive on my instep and diagnosed Allergic Reaction, Cause Unknown, and he gave me a dose of methypredisolone and benadryl while I was there, and a prescription for a methylprednisolone pack to start taking the next day. Methylprednisolone is a steroid. It can cause anger, insomnia, and huge appetite. Let’s check in with Swistle on Day 2 of this medication (which was last night):
The benadryl DID knock me out, for five hours; then I woke up, lay awake for an hour, and happily did get back to sleep for a couple more hours. Today I feel Fairly! Perky! Which is good, because you know how we just talked about the urge to lay in provisions. And then the U.S. president was hospitalized with Covid-19, and suddenly I was VERY VERY INTERESTED INDEED in going grocery shopping, but there I was with my STUPID FOOT, feeling I’d wasted the WHOLE week when neither foot was swollen and I could have shopped ANY TIME!! And we were low on milk! LOW ON MILK!!!
But! The medications have been working beautifully: even yesterday I could walk almost normally/comfortably, and today I can walk without thinking about it at all, so I went to the store. They still didn’t have baking chocolate. And they did not have Diet Mtn Dew (until writing this post, I did not know it was “Mtn Dew” and not “Mt. Dew”), and that is one of Paul’s Emotional Support Foods so I am feeling a little anxious about that, especially because they were LOW on Diet Mtn Dew for the last several trips, so it seems like it’s not just a brief hiccup. Fortunately, that lowness had inspired me to get an extra 12-pack each time, so we’re okay FOR NOW.
And I got LOTS of milk, and plenty of eggs, and got us re-upped on all the normal things we use (cheese! yogurt! bread! meat! french fries!), and got a bag of new fall apples even though we still had a nearly-full bag of new fall apples, so now I feel better.