rainstorm
03-01-09, 20:36
Okay, so it all started a little over three months ago. Throughout my life, I've had a great interest in nature and plants and etc. I had cub scouts as a kid, went on to have one year of boy scouts (perhaps I shouldv'e stuck with it longer)...but anyway, a fascination of mine was thinking about how I could "live off the land" if I ever needed to. And one of the most interesting parts about mother nature, in my opinion, was fungi. For the past couple years, I became obsessed with finding all sorts of different mushroom species in my area, any time I would go on walks on a nature trail or whatever.
Anyway, on october 6th, I thought I had come across a patch of a particular type of honey mushrooms. Needless to say, I wanted to make sure about these, so I ended up harvesting some and taking spore prints. I looked up pictures of the type I thought I found, and read up on the anatomical details of the species and the samples I had collected. Anyway, it all seemed to match up, and my spore prints turned out white (although I made the prints on white note cards, so maybe they weren't white after all and instead dropped barely any spores?) Well, anyway, I decided to eat a few, thinking I had found one of Nature's lovely edible blessings. Turns out, I didn't, I had actually mistaken my find for Galerina autumnalis (Autumn Skullcaps). Within about five or six hours, I found myself with a very dry mouth, and an incredible feeling of thirst. I also had huge waves of nausea. I thought, oh geez, this isn't good! anyway, when the nausea seemed to have subsided, I felt, okay, maybe it was just a little adverse reaction to the (supposed) honey mushrooms. Err, maybe not. The next day, I found myself in an utter state of confusion, and I practically didn't know where I was. My friends had informed me that I was speaking in utter gibberish, even though I thought I was talking normally. This raised some alarms. I excused myself from hanging out, and I got in my car. I knew I had to go to the doctor, something wasn't right. I had read up on amatoxin-containing mushrooms before, but I thought I knew my poisonous species well! By the looks of things, apparently not. I drove myself to the hospital in this confused state. I found it very difficult to drive my car, actually. It was almost if I was really, really drunk. I could barely remember which pedal was the gas and which one was the brake. I found myself sitting at red lights after they turned green because I forgot what "green" meant, and at times it didn't even register in my head that the light actually turned. I have never felt this way before. Anyway, after several wrong turns and subsequent U-turns, I finally found the hospital, and went straight to the emergency room (which was also very hard to find in my state). I informed the receptionist that I believed I had eaten poisonous mushrooms. They got me into a room rather quickly...
Anyway...they ran various blood tests and determined that my electrolytes were all out of whack, and some of my liver enzymes were elevated, though they didn't specify which ones. They gave me some sort of IV painkiller, and ran further blood tests. They couldn't find any traces of poisons or agents in my body, however. I found this to be very odd at first, but upon further reading of amatoxins, I learned that the levels of amanitin drop to undetectable levels within 24 hours, and it had been 24 hours. Anyway, I was admitted overnight at the hospital so they could bring my electrolytes back to normal. I was released the next day...
However, after this time period, I suffered from some terrifying symptoms. I had terribly watery bowel movements for four or five days, and some of my BM's afterward looked like giant mouse-turds (black in color). I had terrible abdominal pain, and shooting pains around my right chest region. I also had back pain and flank pain. I developed foamy urine and a stiff neck. I also had heart palpitations, a couple episodes of blurry vision that lasted about thirty seconds, tinnitus, profuse sweating, and formication. I also dropped about 15 pounds. The blurry vision soon disappeared, and the formication gradually went away, but I still get tiny episodes of it. In replacement of these symptoms, I got muscle and joint pain, headaches, fatigue, and muscle wasting.
Now, this leads me to what's been happening fairly recently. I don't think these two things are related, but, I had noticed a growth near my armpit that was like a small brownish mole, very small in diameter, that was raised about 5mm or so on my arm. I had first noticed it because it was starting to itch recently. I wondered what it was...so I called a dermatologist. Since I have like, three dermatologists in my entire state, they were booked for about three weeks. I was very worried about this mole-ish thing, and I wondered if it was melanoma. I tried removing it with tweezers, but to no avail, the mole seemed to be firmly attached to the skin, and any attempt to pull it off resulting in tugging at all the surrounding skin. I was very worried at this point in time, and I didn't want to wait three weeks to see a derma and risk having this unknown growth get bigger, so I busted out the nail clippers. I grabbed the top of the mole with my thumb and forefinger of one hand, and used the nail clippers to physically cut off the growth. At first, I tried getting underneath the growth, but it was extremely painful when I pushed the clippers together, so I tried cutting near the bottom of the growth, which caused no pain. This also made me think that this was some sort of melanoma. I ended up half-slicing this bad boy off, leaving a tiny bit of brownish growth with scarred skin. Then I felt as if I shouldn't leave any trace of the mole, so about three days later, I took out the nail clippers again, and cut off the remaining suspicious skin, and dug a little deeper with the clippers. There was a scar, but now, it appears as if it has fully healed and the area looks like normal skin.
When I went to the dermatologist, I explained what I had done to this mole-thing, and I showed her the scar before it had faded. She determined that it was probably an in-grown hair. I felt relieved at the moment, but I still wasn't convinced...
The weird thing was, is that I had gotten swollen lymph nodes in my neck (cervical region I think) about a week or so after I removed the whole growth on my upper arm. The nodes were most swollen on the same side of my neck as the arm (left side). They first swelled up when I came down with a cold I believe it was. A really bad cold. It started out with a really stuffy sinuses, and progressed from there. I would blow my nose to attempt to clear out my sinuses, but I would only enjoy like, five or ten seconds of relief before I would have to blow my nose again. Then my sinuses cleared up, but I started coughing up lots of phlegm. I would cough periodically throughout the day, and this phlegm would come up, and I would have to spit it out. It stayed a light yellowish greyish color. I went to the doctor again to be examined. He noted enlarged lymph nodes and gave me antibiotics to take. I took all of them as prescribed. I believe I was given Azithromycin. My cough cleared up upon a couple days after starting the antibiotics, and I finished them off. But, my lymph nodes have not returned to normal. I went back to my doctor and had more tests done (HIV, syphilis, herpes, HPV, mono, CMV), and all of them came back negative. I knew I didn't have mono because throughout this whole bad health fiasco, I haven't had much contact with other people, and I haven't kissed anyone or shared any drinks. In fact, I haven't kissed anyone for half a year, and I thought I probably didn't have HIV either, because I haven't had sex for over a year now. I kind of thought I might have had syphilis because of the formication I was feeling and also the fact I had gotten a painless sore on my you-know-where a long while back, but that also came back negative. They decided to put me on anti-depressants because I have been worked up about this and they think that's what's wrong with me, that I am so concerned over these symptoms that I've just made myself worse. They put me on celexa, which I have been on before, and started me on 20mg working up to 40mg. This didn't sit well with me, as it kept me awake for five days straight, make my insides feel as if they were on fire, and I didn't want to eat at all. I decided to stop taking it after probably three days of use. Then, they decided to try Zoloft on me, but that left me in a state of confusion similar to after I had eaten the bad mushrooms. I stopped taking that after one dose, of 25mg. However, as of lately (the past three or four weeks now), I've been having night sweats, increased fatigue, and trouble eating enough food.
I am particularly worried that the mole type thing I self-removed on my upper arm might be melanoma, and have spread to my lymph nodes in the cervical region. After all, I've been reading that these nodes in particular are responsible for draining the skin of the chest and arms. The nodes in question are two in number. There's one that's right underneath the hinge of my jaw, which is shaped like a bean (i hear that's normal shape), and it's probably 0.8cm in diameter. The other one, is right next to it closer to my adams apple, and it seems to be pea-shaped, about the size of a pea. However, after intense exercise with weights, I have reported the top node to shrink to almost non-existant size, but the lower one doesn't seem to get much smaller, if at all. They are both easy to move around, and pushing on them, they feel firm. They don't hurt, however, unless I poke them enough which causes them to swell a little more. They've been swollen for about two months now, and I even gave them a period of about two weeks without touching them at all, along with extensive exercising and drinking lots of water, to try and get them to shrink. They did somewhat, but now they're the same size as they first were.
I guess my question is, is if melanoma metastisized to the lymph nodes, what would the swelling be like? Would it be as quick as lymphoma, where they swell up to golf-ball size, or is it a dormant process? I've read somewhere online that melanoma in particular shuts down a lymph node's immune response, so that would lead me to believe that the node wouldn't swell up very fast...
I'm just at a loss of what to do here. Day by day, I feel worse, I am very fatigued a lot of the time and sometimes feel like returning to bed after only being awake for a few hours. The night sweats I've been getting are also a concern of mine, but I'm not sure if it's just a reaction my body has been having to the poisoning a few months back, or what...I am still able to lift my normal amount of weights and do just as many reps, but it seems to me that my muscles just aren't as big as they should be for how much weight I am lifting. I've noticed my fatigue seems to fade mostly after exercising, but even if I skip exercising for one day, my muscles deflate so much and I want to sleep constantly...
I am going to the doctor again on Monday. I really don't know what to do. I don't even know if abnormalities would show up on blood tests if I had metastatic melanoma of the lymph nodes, and my nodes probably aren't large enough for the doctors to do a biopsy, even if they've been enlarged for two months now..
Sorry for this incredibly long rant. I hope someone has it in their heart to read most of it (last five paragraphs I feel are most important), and give me their opinion. Thanks...
-Brian
Anyway, on october 6th, I thought I had come across a patch of a particular type of honey mushrooms. Needless to say, I wanted to make sure about these, so I ended up harvesting some and taking spore prints. I looked up pictures of the type I thought I found, and read up on the anatomical details of the species and the samples I had collected. Anyway, it all seemed to match up, and my spore prints turned out white (although I made the prints on white note cards, so maybe they weren't white after all and instead dropped barely any spores?) Well, anyway, I decided to eat a few, thinking I had found one of Nature's lovely edible blessings. Turns out, I didn't, I had actually mistaken my find for Galerina autumnalis (Autumn Skullcaps). Within about five or six hours, I found myself with a very dry mouth, and an incredible feeling of thirst. I also had huge waves of nausea. I thought, oh geez, this isn't good! anyway, when the nausea seemed to have subsided, I felt, okay, maybe it was just a little adverse reaction to the (supposed) honey mushrooms. Err, maybe not. The next day, I found myself in an utter state of confusion, and I practically didn't know where I was. My friends had informed me that I was speaking in utter gibberish, even though I thought I was talking normally. This raised some alarms. I excused myself from hanging out, and I got in my car. I knew I had to go to the doctor, something wasn't right. I had read up on amatoxin-containing mushrooms before, but I thought I knew my poisonous species well! By the looks of things, apparently not. I drove myself to the hospital in this confused state. I found it very difficult to drive my car, actually. It was almost if I was really, really drunk. I could barely remember which pedal was the gas and which one was the brake. I found myself sitting at red lights after they turned green because I forgot what "green" meant, and at times it didn't even register in my head that the light actually turned. I have never felt this way before. Anyway, after several wrong turns and subsequent U-turns, I finally found the hospital, and went straight to the emergency room (which was also very hard to find in my state). I informed the receptionist that I believed I had eaten poisonous mushrooms. They got me into a room rather quickly...
Anyway...they ran various blood tests and determined that my electrolytes were all out of whack, and some of my liver enzymes were elevated, though they didn't specify which ones. They gave me some sort of IV painkiller, and ran further blood tests. They couldn't find any traces of poisons or agents in my body, however. I found this to be very odd at first, but upon further reading of amatoxins, I learned that the levels of amanitin drop to undetectable levels within 24 hours, and it had been 24 hours. Anyway, I was admitted overnight at the hospital so they could bring my electrolytes back to normal. I was released the next day...
However, after this time period, I suffered from some terrifying symptoms. I had terribly watery bowel movements for four or five days, and some of my BM's afterward looked like giant mouse-turds (black in color). I had terrible abdominal pain, and shooting pains around my right chest region. I also had back pain and flank pain. I developed foamy urine and a stiff neck. I also had heart palpitations, a couple episodes of blurry vision that lasted about thirty seconds, tinnitus, profuse sweating, and formication. I also dropped about 15 pounds. The blurry vision soon disappeared, and the formication gradually went away, but I still get tiny episodes of it. In replacement of these symptoms, I got muscle and joint pain, headaches, fatigue, and muscle wasting.
Now, this leads me to what's been happening fairly recently. I don't think these two things are related, but, I had noticed a growth near my armpit that was like a small brownish mole, very small in diameter, that was raised about 5mm or so on my arm. I had first noticed it because it was starting to itch recently. I wondered what it was...so I called a dermatologist. Since I have like, three dermatologists in my entire state, they were booked for about three weeks. I was very worried about this mole-ish thing, and I wondered if it was melanoma. I tried removing it with tweezers, but to no avail, the mole seemed to be firmly attached to the skin, and any attempt to pull it off resulting in tugging at all the surrounding skin. I was very worried at this point in time, and I didn't want to wait three weeks to see a derma and risk having this unknown growth get bigger, so I busted out the nail clippers. I grabbed the top of the mole with my thumb and forefinger of one hand, and used the nail clippers to physically cut off the growth. At first, I tried getting underneath the growth, but it was extremely painful when I pushed the clippers together, so I tried cutting near the bottom of the growth, which caused no pain. This also made me think that this was some sort of melanoma. I ended up half-slicing this bad boy off, leaving a tiny bit of brownish growth with scarred skin. Then I felt as if I shouldn't leave any trace of the mole, so about three days later, I took out the nail clippers again, and cut off the remaining suspicious skin, and dug a little deeper with the clippers. There was a scar, but now, it appears as if it has fully healed and the area looks like normal skin.
When I went to the dermatologist, I explained what I had done to this mole-thing, and I showed her the scar before it had faded. She determined that it was probably an in-grown hair. I felt relieved at the moment, but I still wasn't convinced...
The weird thing was, is that I had gotten swollen lymph nodes in my neck (cervical region I think) about a week or so after I removed the whole growth on my upper arm. The nodes were most swollen on the same side of my neck as the arm (left side). They first swelled up when I came down with a cold I believe it was. A really bad cold. It started out with a really stuffy sinuses, and progressed from there. I would blow my nose to attempt to clear out my sinuses, but I would only enjoy like, five or ten seconds of relief before I would have to blow my nose again. Then my sinuses cleared up, but I started coughing up lots of phlegm. I would cough periodically throughout the day, and this phlegm would come up, and I would have to spit it out. It stayed a light yellowish greyish color. I went to the doctor again to be examined. He noted enlarged lymph nodes and gave me antibiotics to take. I took all of them as prescribed. I believe I was given Azithromycin. My cough cleared up upon a couple days after starting the antibiotics, and I finished them off. But, my lymph nodes have not returned to normal. I went back to my doctor and had more tests done (HIV, syphilis, herpes, HPV, mono, CMV), and all of them came back negative. I knew I didn't have mono because throughout this whole bad health fiasco, I haven't had much contact with other people, and I haven't kissed anyone or shared any drinks. In fact, I haven't kissed anyone for half a year, and I thought I probably didn't have HIV either, because I haven't had sex for over a year now. I kind of thought I might have had syphilis because of the formication I was feeling and also the fact I had gotten a painless sore on my you-know-where a long while back, but that also came back negative. They decided to put me on anti-depressants because I have been worked up about this and they think that's what's wrong with me, that I am so concerned over these symptoms that I've just made myself worse. They put me on celexa, which I have been on before, and started me on 20mg working up to 40mg. This didn't sit well with me, as it kept me awake for five days straight, make my insides feel as if they were on fire, and I didn't want to eat at all. I decided to stop taking it after probably three days of use. Then, they decided to try Zoloft on me, but that left me in a state of confusion similar to after I had eaten the bad mushrooms. I stopped taking that after one dose, of 25mg. However, as of lately (the past three or four weeks now), I've been having night sweats, increased fatigue, and trouble eating enough food.
I am particularly worried that the mole type thing I self-removed on my upper arm might be melanoma, and have spread to my lymph nodes in the cervical region. After all, I've been reading that these nodes in particular are responsible for draining the skin of the chest and arms. The nodes in question are two in number. There's one that's right underneath the hinge of my jaw, which is shaped like a bean (i hear that's normal shape), and it's probably 0.8cm in diameter. The other one, is right next to it closer to my adams apple, and it seems to be pea-shaped, about the size of a pea. However, after intense exercise with weights, I have reported the top node to shrink to almost non-existant size, but the lower one doesn't seem to get much smaller, if at all. They are both easy to move around, and pushing on them, they feel firm. They don't hurt, however, unless I poke them enough which causes them to swell a little more. They've been swollen for about two months now, and I even gave them a period of about two weeks without touching them at all, along with extensive exercising and drinking lots of water, to try and get them to shrink. They did somewhat, but now they're the same size as they first were.
I guess my question is, is if melanoma metastisized to the lymph nodes, what would the swelling be like? Would it be as quick as lymphoma, where they swell up to golf-ball size, or is it a dormant process? I've read somewhere online that melanoma in particular shuts down a lymph node's immune response, so that would lead me to believe that the node wouldn't swell up very fast...
I'm just at a loss of what to do here. Day by day, I feel worse, I am very fatigued a lot of the time and sometimes feel like returning to bed after only being awake for a few hours. The night sweats I've been getting are also a concern of mine, but I'm not sure if it's just a reaction my body has been having to the poisoning a few months back, or what...I am still able to lift my normal amount of weights and do just as many reps, but it seems to me that my muscles just aren't as big as they should be for how much weight I am lifting. I've noticed my fatigue seems to fade mostly after exercising, but even if I skip exercising for one day, my muscles deflate so much and I want to sleep constantly...
I am going to the doctor again on Monday. I really don't know what to do. I don't even know if abnormalities would show up on blood tests if I had metastatic melanoma of the lymph nodes, and my nodes probably aren't large enough for the doctors to do a biopsy, even if they've been enlarged for two months now..
Sorry for this incredibly long rant. I hope someone has it in their heart to read most of it (last five paragraphs I feel are most important), and give me their opinion. Thanks...
-Brian