[ankle_brains]

everybody gets sick every now and then, but what is the worst sickness you have been stuck with and for how long?

i had a strep throat for a few weeks that was really bad.

what about you?

[chris v]

Ankle_brain disease, for a little over 4 months, now. It's bad.

CV

[gorickey]

My battle with "Mono and Strep" was no fun...

[ryju]

I think it was the flu last year, I could only sleep for a few minutes and would wake up in a pool of my own sweat, absolutely horrible, plus I was shaking violently.

Too bad getting my wisdom teeth isn't a sickness because that would take the cake.

[Beewee]

Caught strep throat a while back, I think it was viral, the antibiotics didn't do a thing. I didn't start to feel better until I was almost out and then it could have just been a coincidence.

When one's throat almost swells closed it tends to get a guy down...all pudding and liquid diet for a little over a week.
MMMMmmmm...

[gorickey]

Originally posted by Beewee:
When one's throat almost swells closed it tends to get a guy down...all pudding and liquid diet for a little over a week.
MMMMmmmm...

Amen, I hear ya....but I also had 101+ degree fever, a red rash all over my body, and no energy (as that is what Mono zaps from you) to boot all at the same time...

[OH-N'omac]

I've had a bad case of Ennui for almost ten years.

[Spliff]

Originally posted by OH-N'omac:
I've had a bad case of Ennui for almost ten years.

[vmpaul]

A case of food poisoning got me real bad years ago. Lost 10 pounds in about 24 hours. Leakage from the major orifices, briefly passed out in the bathroom. Pretty nasty.

[Eriamjh]

Sinus infection with 104 degF temps over Xmas then I got mono, had a reaction with the antibiotics that gave me a nasty rash and puffy skin. All in all I missed four weeks of work.

[zigzag]

I had a bad case of shingles about 6 years ago. It's a weird adult recurrence of chicken pox, which stays in your system forever and occasionally attacks the nervous system. It starts out as a rash and gradually the entire skin surface becomes blistered, accompanied by stinging pains all over. It usually only affects a few inches of the torso on one side, but I had it on both sides from the waist all the way up to my eyes, basically my entire upper body. The doctor said it was the worst case he had ever seen. There's no real treatment - all you can do is lie there in pain for two weeks until the blisters break and dry up. I couldn't shower or shave so I basically looked and smelled like a leper for two weeks. Not that I really know what a leper looks or smells like, but you get the idea.

[DeathToWindows]

Yersinia enterocolitica

at the age of three... barfed my brains out for a week and vomited off-and-on for an entire summer - BRAT diet for 6wks.

[Face Ache]

I caught mono back when I was a lab assistant. Did my own test, took the results to the boss and gave myself four weeks off.

[deej5871]

The worst I've had (so far, being young) was pneumonia. I had it when I was like, 10, so I can't remember any details (luckily). I had it for 2 weeks though.. I remember 'cause my sister and I had it at the same time and we both got to miss school for those 2 weeks .

[mdc]

this is strange, i can not think of anything that has knocked me out for a more than a day.

[gorickey]

Originally posted by mdc:
this is strange, i can not think of anything that has knocked me out for a more than a day.

You aren't human...

[Mulattabianca]

i had a kidney crash 2 years ago. had a fever btw 102 and 107 getting up and getitng down every 2 hours. i could not sleep for a week and was 2 weeks offline as i was too sick to sit down .. everything hurt, and my kidneys hurt and i was about to black out walking to toilet.

i felt sicker with that kidney crash than when i was 80 lb (x 5'9")

[cal4ever]

I haven't been on macnn for a while, glad to be back.

Anyway, I remember getting really sick a few years ago. I never kenw what I had but my throat hurt so bad! I had a 100+ fever for a few days. I was a freshman and college at the time. I had no car, so I couldn't get to the clinic. So, I just stayed in bed for a week or so and waited for it to go away. I was so dumb for not seeing a doctor.

[Logic]

Sepsis when I was about 5. Don't remember much but I do remember I was at the hospital for a while. Fever above 41�C. Life threatening.

Then I had pneumonia when I was about 6-7. Didn't go to the hospital since my parents took care of me that time(my father is a doctor and my mother is a nurse), again fever over 41�C. But not life threatening.

Since then I've been lucky and haven't gotten any serious diseases.

[DeathToWindows]

Logic: Septis, as in blood septis? Holy ****, you are a lucky bastard to survive that!

[Rain]

Hand eczema. An ongoing problem. At it's worst my fingers were dry, itchy, cracked with exposed raw skin, and oozing with clear to yellowish liquid. It looked like I had flesh eating disease. It was both disgusting and painful. Prescription cream is now my best friend.

ETA: I don't know what illness I had when I was a baby (high fever, chills, epileptic fits), but my parents said I almost died because of it. Being poor, sick and living in a developing country is not a good combination...I was very lucky to have survived. I guess that would be the worst sickness I've ever had.

[Logic]

Originally posted by DeathToWindows:
Logic: Septis, as in blood septis? Holy ****, you are a lucky bastard to survive that!

Yup

[Lateralus]

The one that really knocked me out was when I finally got Chicken Pox at the age of 14.

My mother says my temperature reached around 106. I hardly remember anything. I do remember her filling the bathtub with cold water and putting me in it to drop my temperature down before my brain fried.

Never did go to the hospital, too expensive. Just spent a few days totally immobile.

But the most painful thing thus far in my life happened to me about a month ago: My first migraine attack. It lasted for a few hours, and it was bad. It felt like my I had broken a bone in my head. I still don't know what brought it on.

I have broken a few bones before, but the migraine takes the cake for pain since when I broke bones, I went to the hospital and was given medications to dull the pain.

[dcmacdaddy]

Drank myself unconscious, went into cardiac arrest, spent almost three days in an alcohol-induced coma. BAC was still above .10 when they released me from the hospital.

Do I win?

[vexborg]

Double sided pneumonia - actually my doctor managed to tell my parents that it was ok for me to go to Morocco on a holiday, since he felt noting was wrong with me! Needless to say that we changed our doctor...

Listeria monocytogenes - spent 3 weeks vomiting and shitting myself, lost 10 kgs

[The Placid Casual]

Double Pneumonia and pleurisy in both lungs here.

I was out of action for about 4 months from the time I originally collapsed and finally felt able to go out again.

I honestly thought I would die.

I am allergic to all penicillin and antibiotics, so there was little they could do to treat me... just keep my temp down, keep me hydrated, and hope my body could fight it off on it's own.

I went through a phase of delirium where I seemed to see everything in pale blue 'code'. Kind of like the Neo 'seeing' the Matrix thing, but f*cking scary. At the height of it, I couldn't sleep for days and every time I opened my eyes and looked at anything, it was in this kind of code.

At that point in retrospect, I think I wished I was dead.

[voodoo]

I was hung over for 2 days last week.

[DeathToWindows]

Originally posted by voodoo:
I was hung over for 2 days last week.

that does not count. bah.

[gorickey]

Originally posted by DeathToWindows:
that does not count. bah.

Does 7 straight days count?

[ShortcutToMoncton]

I got double pneumonia when I was 14 or so. I was sick for a couple days and when my Mom finally brought me into Emergency my temperature was 41.8 �C.... Even better was that they didn't exactly know what was wrong with me! It finally turned out that I had an old-school type of pneumonia...apparently there's been different strains over the years. Mine wasn't the "one" they normally see....it was the type they used to get in the early 1900s, which meant they took a while to identify it.

I was in the hospital for a week or so on an IV machine. What a great week; got to miss school, and saw Ace Ventura: Pet Detective on video!

greg

[:XI:]

i brought up nothing but bile for 12 hours or something. that's it. Burned all my throat and mouth though. I can still remember the taste. 10 years later.

Lucky me

[KP*]

This probably isn't too bad, but when I was in 2nd grade I was sick very often because I had problems with my tonsils. One time I missed two weeks of school, came back for one day, got sick, and missed another two weeks. Once school was done for the year I had my tonsils removed and wasn't sick again for years.

[sek929]

Mono for about 4 and a half weeks. I liken it to being a Zombie, zero energy, couldn't even muster laughs when watching Simpsons on TV...it was when I was like 8 or something though, so I don't remember it all that well.

I did get the Flu this year and it was horrible, after the second day of Zombification and sweating through my sheets I pumped myself up (for three or fours hours) to walk out of my apt. and across the street for Nyquil and Ibuprofen....two more days of slightly less hell insued.

[SamuraiDL]

The Hawaiian crud. It went around my whole family and and some relatives. If you got it, you threw up every hour for about five days.

[DeathMan]

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
...pleurisy....

I had this on one lung, and I also thought I was going to die. We took care of it only after a day, since I was able to take antibiotics, but that was easily the most pain I've ever been in. I've heard from a mother of 8 that pleurisy is worse than child birth.

The problem is that it hurts to breathe, and I was to the point where I would rather pass out than keep breathing. I know what you mean when you say you wished you were dead. Had mine lasted as long, I would have thought the same thing.

[phoenixboy]

pneumonia when i was about 17 years old.

took about 5 weeks to get over. it was the only time so far that i actually felt close to dying due to illness.