Misdiagnosed symptoms. Bacterial infection

[bstargazer18]

I wanna start off by saying this. I had this illness in April of this year and I was ill for about a week. I am better now. I’m trying to research on what I could of possibly had. I was unable to be tested due to the urgent care running out of testing kits. So I was diagnosed with an upper respiratory infection caused by a virus (incorrect). I believe I was misdiagnosed because I immediately felt better on antibiotics.

Symptoms:
Fever of probably 103 or 104 lasting for 5 days
Extreme chills
No appetite
Difficulty sleeping
Pressure in my chest when lying down making it hard to breathe
Back aches along with other body aches
Nausea and vomiting due to the high fever
Sweating
Headache
Feeling congested in the head but no nasal congestion
Just overall feeling like garbage

[AnnieBrooke]

You are saying you went to Urgent Care, and you were "unable to be tested" (I assume you mean, for Covid), and you didn't just go to the drugstore and buy a test kit? They are available all over and cost less than a visit to Urgent Care. I ask because it would be helpful to have ruled Covid out, for the purposes of wondering now what you had then. (It really sounds like Covid.) The fact that Urgent Care was OK with just writing you a scrip for an antibiotic seems odd, given that medical practice is not to over-prescribe antibiotics due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria problems.

Anyway, given where you are now, which is feeling better and being sure it was bacterial, all you can do is try to run down where you might have picked up something bacterial. It could have been a secondary infection that arrived because you had a virus, that happens a lot with viral infections. It could have been from some kind of bacteria in your environment. Doesn't sound like Lyme disease due to the lack of a rash. Any small injuries or punctures to the skin at that time?

[bstargazer18]

Well it wasn’t just for Covid. I was doing home tests and kept testing negative. I went to the urgent care to really be tested for anything cause at that time I had the mindset of “whatever this is, it sucks, please make it stop.” I’m sure I had caught it from the gym. The gyms here are disgusting and I never know when they’re actually cleaned. I went to the restroom and was locked in a stall and had no choice but to get down on the floor and crawl out. I must of gotten it then.

[bstargazer18]

I thought it was Flu at first or Covid. It wasn’t. I kept getting worse which led me to the Urgent Care. My mom is a nurse and kept pushing going onto me and said I needed antibiotics. And finally I broke down and she took me.

[AnnieBrooke]

A stall floor in a none-too-clean gym would be a dandy place to pick up all kinds of stuff. It doesn't sound like it will happen again unless you get locked in a stall there again.

[bstargazer18]

Yeah. I’m just wondering what infection I could of possibly picked up that nearly landed me in a hospital. At one point, according to my watch, my blood oxygen levels dropped to 88%

[AnnieBrooke]

Sorry, again that sounds a lot like Covid. Are you sure you took the home tests correctly?

[bstargazer18]

I followed directions just like it told me. I thought I did it wrong the first time (I was isolating from everyone in my car). So I waited the amount of days it said in between tests and did it again at home on a more level surface and got the same results. Wouldn’t Covid not respond to antibiotics cause it’s a virus?

[AnnieBrooke]

It's true that viruses aren't affected by antibiotics, but viruses can make the body susceptible to a secondary infection that is bacterial. like when people get a cold and then get bronchitis or pneumonia. If what you had was Covid, or any virus that runs for about a week or 10 days, enough time had gone by when you finally got to Urgent Care that it would have been near the end of its course. (In other words, you could have begun to get better from the virus naturally at the same time as you began antibiotics.) There are a lot of times when we take something and feel better but whether the thing we took solved the problem or it was just our body healing remains an open question.

It's likely too late to know for sure now what you had. They have tests people can do after the fact to see what variant(s) of Covid they have antibodies to, (back in April, Omicron was new and very contagious), but those tests are mostly used for research. If they ever do make that kind of test available to the general public, you might take one and see if you've ever had Omicron BA-2.

[bstargazer18]

True. I never thought of that. I really only ever started feeling symptoms the beginning of the bacterial infection. I started out really tired and slightly feverish (chilled) and thought if I were to go home and sleep it off maybe I’d feel better. Next morning I woke up, got out of bed, and nearly flopped into the floor and I immediately knew something was wrong. As that day progressed I just felt worse and worse. As the week progressed I started picking  up more symptoms. However I felt perfectly normal before all of this happened. I wonder, if it was Covid, was it asymptomatic? Or is that a thing with the newer strains?

[bstargazer18]

Because I had colds that turned to bronchitis before. It started out as a little cold then get worse after like a week.

[AnnieBrooke]

I had Omicron in March, and what you're describing sounds very familiar. I've had the two shots and one of the two boosters, and still got it. It acted a lot like what you had.

Anyway, it doesn't seem like you're going to know for sure, but since you're over it now, you might just go on assuming you did have it and keep getting your boosters as they are developed. Covid really can knock people out for a while. My cousin couldn't even walk from her bed to the bathroom, she had to crawl because she was so weak.

[bstargazer18]

Hmm. It makes sense. My symptoms don’t really line up with anything else. So I suppose you’re right.