flea related disease

[Huntindog45]

So late last year i posted about an illness I was having. We have run the gamut in testing, guessing. etc. i was about to go to a voodoo witch doctor because all other options had run out. Originally we thought i surely had west Nile virus, then it was even looking like it may be lymphoma. I was very sick for a long period of time. Chills, fevers, sweats. Just felt like crap for months. We tested for all the obvious stuff. Lyme's of course as well as a bunch of other water/tick/mosquito transmitted illness. And then after several months of this i finally get into UC DAVIS infectious disease doctor and within a week she ran blood work and I tested positive for ... CAT SCRATCH FEVER (you cannot make this up) as well as another bacterial infection.

The back story is in august while at work i had a small kitten come up to me. this thing was sick, covered in fleas and was about to die. I am a biologist and I know the impacts feral cats have on birds , so typically i would have handled this situation much differently. There were a bunch of people with me and...I live in California so... we know how my typical handling of that scenario would have ended. and I just felt sorry for the cat. I brought it home, with all its fleas and apparently the bacterial infections it carried. A friend adopted the cat and it is now living happily ever after at her house. the bacterial infections have been living happily in my body. Yes i have received multiple links to Ted Nugent music video clips so i will save you the trouble. my friends are having a lot of fun with this. Everyone who knows me knew it would be some strange..p@##y .. that would be my undoing.

Anyway. This last six months have been hell. Not knowing why i was sick, wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I honestly was starting to look at disability because i was not sure what was going on. Long and short of it. Be careful when handling critters with fleas. There is so much i would have done differently knowing what I know now. I am now on some pretty gnarly antibiotics, i have to have and echo-cardiogram done to see if it impacted my heart valves and I will be monitored for awhile. But I am glad to have a diagnosis, and very glad it is not cancer.

 

[Btaylor]

Does that qualify as an STD?

Glad they got it sorted out for you and that it wasnt worse.

 

[austinphps]

Glad it's not something worse....just have to question how in the hell it could take 6 months to diagnose that on a doctors part?

 

[Huntindog45]

Glad it's not something worse....just have to question how in the hell it could take 6 months to diagnose that on a doctors part?

Yah... it was diagnosed within one week of me getting a referral to uc Davis Infectious disease... trust me I am not thrilled about the timeframe


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[Beendare]

Dang dog...nasty.........best of luck with that...

 

[sneaky]

Gotta admit, that opening riff from Uncle Ted popped in my head as soon as I read the diagnosis lol

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[WV Mountaineer]

Man, I'm glad to hear that. Been thinking about you off and on for sometime now. 25 years ago I was sick like that. Not for that long. But, long enough I was pretty sure I was dying. No answers. Came home from work, after simply quitting. High fever for a long time. Sore body, joints, erratic heartbeat, sore throat, etc.... I truly came home after quitting my job, drove back home to where I grew up, crawled in bed at my dads house and literally prepared to die right there. I got up only to use the bathroom and drink water for the next three days.

My dad was catting around with several women so he came and went with no regard at first. But, after three days of doing so, he came into my bedroom and insisted I get up and start moving around. When I set up and gave him a full view of how terrible I looked, it scared him. He had to help me out of bed. At that point, it was decided by him that we were going to the old doctor he had always went too.

I had been to university Hospitals, ER's, 3 infectious disease specialists, etc.... With no relief other then antibiotics that would slow down the progression. TO make a long story short, i walked into that doctors office, was taken back within 10 minutes, and interviewed by the doc. I told her where I had been working, what I had done months prior, etc..... After hearing it all, she told me she was going to test me for Lyme's disease. And, that she was going to go ahead and treat it as such. It came back positive and I went through 30 days of some pretty intense meds. For the most part, problem free after that.

Medicine is a hard thing to get right when things are unknown. With insurance companies dictating options, it gets even worse. But, there is someone out there that can and will help you if you look hard enough. Gusto to you for not giving up. And, praise God for putting her in your life.


P.S. You watch yourself in the next several years. Being sick that long and that severe, can influence future health

 

[JPD350]

Sorry to hear it took so long to diagnose and glad you are feeling better!
So did the sick cat scratch or bite you or was it the fleas biting you?

 

[austinphps]

I guess in regards to WVs post - if you don't really know what could have caused it - it could be hard to diagnose it. I would just think they would have ran the gamete of blood tests and CSF would have been included in that.

I got bit by a dog once right between the nail and skin....it turned a little black so at first I just thought it was bruised - but then it got swollen, so I lanced it....ya it was infected.

Went to the doc - told him how it happened and he said it was probably CSF or at least was going to treat it as such, and he gave me a Tetanus shot and some antibiotics and that was about it. But clearly I knew what it was from.

It would have been extremely hard for me not to go off on these doctors after a cancer diagnoses for it only to be CSF and took them 6 months to figure it out.

 

[5MilesBack]

Didn't they supposedly "confirm" that you had lymphoma at one time or another. Seems I remember you talking about needing to start treatments for that. What happened to all that? Scary that they'd diagnose lymphoma and want to start treatments when it's not lymphoma.

Back in 2011 I started having a whole bunch of weird stuff going on. After many tests and many doctors the hematologist said I had every symptom of heavy metal poisoning and/or CBR exposure, yet they couldn't confirm any of it with tests. At this point I just deal with it. Many have suggested Gulf War Syndrome.........who knows.

 

[wyosteve]

My former neighbor went through something similar. Joints started swelling with redness. Went to various hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic in MN. Even they couldn't diagnose it. Finally the hospital in MT. figured it out and it was a rare lymphoma. He only made it 9 months and was gone right after turning 50!

 

[Huntindog45]

Didn't they supposedly "confirm" that you had lymphoma at one time or another. Seems I remember you talking about needing to start treatments for that. What happened to all that? Scary that they'd diagnose lymphoma and want to start treatments when it's not lymphoma.

Back in 2011 I started having a whole bunch of weird stuff going on. After many tests and many doctors the hematologist said I had every symptom of heavy metal poisoning and/or CBR exposure, yet they couldn't confirm any of it with tests. At this point I just deal with it. Many have suggested Gulf War Syndrome.........who knows.

may have overstated it at the time but yah. i had an oncologist and everything and there was a very high degree of certainty that was the direction we were going. the infectious disease doctor i am seeing said that she has had a couple people come to here through oncology because the way this disease affects lymphatic system that it looks so much like lymphoma. I had lesions on my spleen and my liver that they were fairly certain were going to come back malignant. had biopsies on both that ended up being benign and thats when we started looking at infectious diseases.

 

[IdahoElk]

glad to hear you're doing better

 

[Huntindog45]

glad to hear you're doing better

Yah my friends have had fun with that one... in fact this is the current arrangement in my cube

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[Fatcamp]

We spend some time in an area with plague. We avoid the prairie dog towns and use sprays, but still, makes a guy nervous.

 

[Crang]

I got cat scratch fever from the same tick bite that gave me Lyme. They often come together. BTW just as a PSA- I wasted years of looking to figure out what I had. What a regular doctor doesnt know is that the tests they give (because your insurance will cover) for Lyme and most of the tick borne illnessess give false negatives to about 50% of the people who take them- myself included. Unless your doctor tested you through iGeneX Labs or DNA Connexions (you would remember the bill) you havent been sufficiently checked and cleared. I learned this the hard way and now know scores of people in that boat. Wasted 3 years of my life over it. Go to a Lyme Literate MD (LLMD) and get checked the right way. You can order the DNA Connexions test at home and just find a lyme doc if you have it. If I found out I had Cat Scratch Fever (which is called Bartonella when you get it from a tick)- I would sure as heck get retested for Lyme the right way.

 

[FLAK]

Just wait till you get a staph infection, party time.
I about lost a pinky finger.

 

[Huntindog45]

I got cat scratch fever from the same tick bite that gave me Lyme. They often come together. BTW just as a PSA- I wasted years of looking to figure out what I had. What a regular doctor doesnt know is that the tests they give (because your insurance will cover) for Lyme and most of the tick borne illnessess give false negatives to about 50% of the people who take them- myself included. Unless your doctor tested you through iGeneX Labs or DNA Connexions (you would remember the bill) you havent been sufficiently checked and cleared. I learned this the hard way and now know scores of people in that boat. Wasted 3 years of my life over it. Go to a Lyme Literate MD (LLMD) and get checked the right way. You can order the DNA Connexions test at home and just find a lyme doc if you have it. If I found out I had Cat Scratch Fever (which is called Bartonella when you get it from a tick)- I would sure as heck get retested for Lyme the right way.

yah i have been tested for lyme through the process you described... was clear of that luckily. cant imagine having both. Bartonella put me down and out for a year. my heart valve is all F'd up because of it now and that will have to be addressed at some point but the my blood titers are finally coming up somewhat clear so that is a relief in itself.

 

[Blockcaver]

Be aware of Tularemia as well. Caught it from a rabbit I shot in NW CO. Ended up putting me in the hospital when my temp went up to 105*F. Was not diagnosed by a town doctor for a couple of weeks....he thought I had the flu. Finally with a lesion on my finger near the cut that let the bacteria in, a blood poisoning streak up my arm and a swollen lymph node in my arm pit, the Drs listened to my self diagnosis, as I'd had a friend get it a few years earlier.. Wasn't a fun time but IV antibiotics cleared it up fairly quickly.

 

[JayTx]

A friend of my wife picked up a stray kitten similar conditions. She ended up with some skin rash all over her hands, neck, face and arms. Kitties are dirty...