holy crap-iola

Hello faithful readers. I'm sorry that I haven't posted much lately. This past week has been one from hell in many aspects.

This week was NBC week. For all you non-military types, NBC is "Nuclear, Biological and Chemical". We sat through some of the driest, most boring lectures on the face of the planet for 5 days, 0830 to 1730 not including getting up at 0-dark-thirty for PT. At any given point you could see at least 10 people within your viewing range dozing in some form or another. We have our exam on that stuff on monday, 14 Feb.

On top of all of that I was battling this raging swollen Right arm. It was painful and about 3 cm diameter larger than the left. I tried to tough it out thinking it would go down with ice and Ibuprophen. I was wrong. I went to the troop clinic on the 8th to get checked out. This is where the story gets interesting. The PA eval-ed me and said that I had damaged my axillary lymph vessels from strenous physical training (the day I reported as 02Feb) and then refered me to PT (physical therapy). I went to the PT on thursday 10Feb. The PT was very knowledgable and caught some S/S that I would never have thought of. He suspected something called rhabdomyelisis. It's when muscle tissue is torn and the proteins therein (creatine kinase-- CK) is released into the lymph and blood vessels to be processed by the kidneys. When the kidneys are overloaded, stuff gets backed up...thus the swelling in my arm. So I had blood drawn and made an appointment for monday 14Feb for lab results and tx. Well..... Friday morning OBC class took us out to the field for leadership stuff and the gas chamber. About an hour into the stuff I'm called out.
"REMILLARD. Do we have a Remillard here?"
"Yes Sir."
"Did you go to PT yesterday?"
"Yes Sir. I was at PT" ... thinking that he was referring to physical training.
"No, I mean physical therapy. Did you have blood drawn?"
"Yes sir."
"Get your stuff your done here. I have get you to the ER."
???!!!?????!!!!????
Apparently my ck levels, normal being <100, was closer to 10, 000, which is just short of what shows up when someone has a stroke or heart attack. (Not meaning that I had either or was close, but the protein levels were at high enough to cause alot of concern for medical personnel.)
From there I was taken to the Emergancy Room. Then subsequently admitted to the hospital for observation for the night. I was on a saline drip all day and night. I think I went through something like 4500 ml of saline (4.5 bags). What the drip did was put so much water through my body that it diluted the proteins and flushed it out of my body. By the time I fell asleep my arm was almost 95% back to normal size! When I talked to the doc that night, they ruled out rhabdo and classified me as a severe case of myositis, inflamation of the muscle tissue. (THANK THE LORD... rhabdo is a really really bad dx)

Well, obviously I'm back now. The hospital d/c me this am around 0915. The lessen of the week is that if your Physical training instructor is making you do tons of exercises that you know are bad for you all in one shot, don't participate (according to the PA who reamed me a new one for continuing).

I'm fine now, back to normal, just a little weak and tired. My next entry should have more pictues and I'll explain what they are all about then. Until then, stay healthy and don't push yourself to swollen extremities.

Oh, and in the middle there somewhere on thursday the 10th of February I was promoted to 1LT.

out.