Wah. That's about the best way to describe my mood right now because once again I have a random ailment with no easily discernible source.

What it is so far: in the absence of any other symptoms and any immediate possible triggers, my throat was starting to constrict. No fever, nausea, sinus problems, headaches, swollen lymph nodes, or any of the other indicators I consider my usual first symptoms. Not one of them. This is also my first case of this ever happening to me, so it's not normal in the least, which one can imagine as being a little scary. Anything else I can deal with, but I live by myself and so breathing issues are probably the only thing I don't ever want to try to deal with on my own.

The low down: a bit of restriction in my throat Thursday morning but it went away after only a few minutes. Another "flare up" or whatever on Friday night. I was at my mom's as manual labor again and so asked her about it since she remembers EVERYTHING that has ever happened to me...and I was very rambunctious and accident prone when I was little so she has quite the medical dictionary. (Of course, it helped that my brother accumulated his fair share so she's Dr. Mom still for the two of us.) She noted the same thing I did, which was that there was no sign of infection visibly in my throat, my lymph nodes were fine, and I had no fever. We figured maybe it was just delayed hay fever or I might be battling a minor throat prob so it'd be best if I just rested and made sure I didn't provoke whatever "it" was.

Flash forward to yesterday. A generally normal day with my morning coffee, a lunch out at a new place with a friend, the usual talking about my tests with the relevant coworkers. Nothing out of the ordinary...until after I get home. I notice the throat start to act up again and just decide to chill out until bed and let it go away on its own. Except instead of going away, it started slowly getting worse. By the time 9:30-10pm hit, I had wanted to be in bed but the problem wasn't showing any sign of getting better and I was starting to get worried. Called Dr. Mom but there was nothing she could do or recommend other than waiting up to see if it would eventually go away or go to the ER since that's the only place you find a doctor at 11pm.

To the ER! They're as stumped as I am since all of my vitals are normal. Probably doesn't help that my vitals are below normal on a "normal" day and so a regular temp and blood pressure is actually me with a fever and stressed. But they were all better than normal if not quite as low as usual: no problem there! Perfect pink throat so no infection...but the only other option is that it might be the beginnings of strep. Wonderful. So they gag me getting the samples from my throat to culture and tell me they're doing a quick culture to get an immediate read. Quick means 2hrs. And I'm in my underwear in an AC room...brrrr. Yup, that was a long wait! The quick culture comes back negative (yay!) but I was told that 20% of neg quick cultures are positive in the full culture test (doh!) which they're also running for me. I'm hoping my luck with these statistics doesn't follow the same pattern as the thyroid...

So with still no answers, what's a gal to do?! Take anti-inflammatory steroids for the next four days. If the symptoms stay the same over the next couple of days, I'm to see my primary care physician and see about getting to a throat specialist. If it gets better, then we'll just never know what the hell was wrong and just pray it doesn't happen again. And of course, if it gets worse I'm to go straight back to the ER. Sounds fun, right?!

Better yet, I'm to lay off the exercise for a bit. This weekend is the Mud Run that I've been looking forward to for months and have been training a friend to run too. I hope it gets better by then, but if not I'll have a certain decision to make cuz this whole thing is pissing me off. I can show up and get my package but don't run, just watch my friend. Or I can deal with it the same way I dealt with a head cold during a New Year's Eve run up in NJ: run lightly but still participate. Of course, I had decongestants and other stuff that actually helped relieve the symptoms for that, whereas I'm not really noticing a difference yet now. Grrrrr, I think I am raging at my 'roids for not working.