Rheumatic Fever

In October 2011 I was feeling tired all the time.  My joints were hurting as I spotted the kids in gymnastics but I told myself it was probably just my now 31 year old body getting old.  My throat hurt constantly but I blamed it on my allergies.  I was having night sweats that then turned into hot flashes during the day as well.  I was irritable and constantly telling my kids that I just didn't feel good and that I needed to go lie down.  It made it all worse because I put so much guilt on myself.  I told myself that I was a bad mother because I could never do the things the kids wanted me to do.  I told myself I was just being lazy and that I just needed to snap out of it.  I went to my obgyn thinking it had something to do with that and she put me on birth control just to up the hormones in my body.  Then my whole body broke out in a rash and I started having heart palpitations.  My heart would feel like it stopped beating for a second and then have to beat extra fast to catch up.  Russ prescribed me a steroid for the rash but it only made it worse.  I scheduled an appointment with a dermatologist and was told that it looked like a viral rash and they asked me if I had been sick recently.  I said no because I was blaming all these other symptoms on being a lazy mother not actually being sick.  They told me it would probably go away in a couple weeks after the virus had run its course.  A month later the rash was still not gone.  I went back and they did a biopsy.  It came back as eczema (the biopsy she took was of a spot on the rash that was drying out and going away).  Again I thought, lazy mother syndrome, buck up and stop being tired all the time!  I started drinking green smoothies and trying to eat healthier, I already exercised plenty so I decided to maybe take 1 day off a week from my normal exercise routine.  The rash would come and go and the heart palpitations were still there so Russ decided for me that I needed to go see our family practice doctor.  I set up an appointment and he had me do all kinds of blood work.  When I went back in for the results they were all kinds of crazy!  I had so many abnormal levels on so many different things that he had no idea what was wrong with me.  The biggest thing that stuck out to him were my ASO Titers.  Normal levels are around 100 and mine were 460.  He asked me if I had a sore throat because these levels are usually abnormal in people who have strep throat.  I said no but he tested me anyways and it came up positive for strep.  He put me on penicillin for 14 days and I scheduled a follow up for the same amount of time.  When I went back I didn't feel any better and the rash wasn't any better either.  He sent me to a heart doctor and I had an echo done which came back normal.  The Heart doctor was concerned about my blood pressure being abnormally low and of course the hear palpitations.  She felt like there was definitely something wrong and attributed the normal echo to my healthy running lifestyle and strong heart because of that.  She told me to up my sodium intake when I was feeling faint from my low blood pressure, which was a pretty regular thing now a days too.  This actually helped a ton!  I started to notice my sore throats more and my doctor put me on more penicillin.  At this point he sent me to a Rheumatologist and as he was going through all his questioning with me he said something about Rheumatic Fever.  A light bulb when on in my head and I remembered that when I was 13 I missed 2 weeks of school from being sick and the doctors said something about Rheumatic Fever at that point as well.  I mentioned this to my family doctor at my next visit and all the pieces started to fall into place.  He consulted with an infectious disease doctor and a rheumatologist and they all agreed that this must be what I had.  Just to make sure though he wanted me to go to a different dermatologist than I had seen previously.  This visit was horrible!  He want to rule everything out so he scraped my skin to pieces, I was bleeding all over.  Then he took 2 biopsies, which I made the mistake of watching him do and almost fainted.  The test came back saying that yes indeed it was a rash cause by a strep infection.  After 6 months of being on penicillin my ASO titers actually went up to 475 so my family doctor put me on a lot higher dose this time administered in a shot form.  I have now been on penicillin through a shot every 4 weeks for 18 months now and my ASO titers are finally starting to come down, my last test was 408.  He changed my dosage to every 6 weeks now and I started to feel crappy again at week 5 so we are changing to every 5 weeks now.