Happy May 4th!
Whew, what a weekend! I pretty much worked the entire day on Saturday, on a project that is due this week at work. Emily and I spent some time together Saturday evening, but I was pretty much spent by the time I decided to call it quits. Saturday afternoon I started smelling ammonia. I thought it was the cat boxes but nobody else in my family could smell it. As the day went on, I continued smelling it. Before I went to bed I looked up "smelling ammonia" on good ol' Google. There are plenty of articles on the web related to this "phantom smelling." Some things made sense...using nose sprays (can cause a fungus to grow in your nose and you will smell ammonia), Chronic Kidney Disease (late stage), sinus infection, and more. I decided to send a MyChart message to my doctor explaining the weird symptom and a few others that went along with it, such as severe headaches, pounding heartbeat in my head, blurry vision, and fatigue. All of those symptoms are related to the new medications I'm on, so I wanted him to know what all I was feeling. I had a great feeling that he would write me back and tell me he has no idea what is wrong.
I was right. That's exactly what he said. He said he does not know why I'm smelling ammonia and if I'm concerned about the new meds and side effects I should contact my pulmonologist. Well, that would be great, however, she took herself off as part of my care team (I don't know why).
Yesterday it wasn't so bad, but today, that's all I can smell and it's truly driving me nuts. Speaking of yesterday, I was determined to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather. I worked on my project until 2:00 and Emily and I headed to the park. We started off throwing the Frisbee, moved to kicking the soccer ball, then while she rested, I practiced juggling the soccer ball, then she joined in. We decided to finish it off with skating in the parking lot. We were gone about 2 hours. Then I came home, drew a little, and decided to go out and throw the ball against the rebound net. Somehow, the same thing happened to me yesterday as what happened during my college softball season. I forgot how to throw the ball. WHAT? I don't understand how this happens. I had a shoulder injury then, just as I do now. I wonder if it was because I was so tired from the earlier activity. My shoulder definitely was hurting. I decided after 30 minutes of complete and utter frustration to call it a day. I came inside, took a shower, and cooked spaghetti for dinner. We all sat in the living room and watched TV. I wanted to work on my UP picture I was drawing, so I did that for a little while. Bed time was around 11:00.
I had a very restless night. I am trying to come off all the nighttime sedatives so I only took Ambien. Harry's snoring kept me awake much of the night. I also had extremely bad dreams. One dream I was on a college campus looking for someone. I ended up in a dorm room where everyone was pushing drugs. One guy was trying to hand me a needle he just took out of his arm and he was dying. I ended up running with a knife in my hands. Somehow I ended up as a Paramedic on an ambulance and running calls by myself. I ran my 2nd call but couldn't remember the first one. I only remember having a pounding headache. In my dream I rated my headaches as they came as a 4.1 and 5.3 (not sure where those numbers came from). I really did wake up with a pounding headache. It was quite possibly the 2nd worse headache I've ever had. Since waking up, I feel a little better, but the smell of ammonia is still here.
Today is going to be busy. I've been working since I woke up. Later I have to go into the office to help my boss teach a class on performance management. Before I go in, we have to meet and go over the class and talk about our project that is due tomorrow.
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