My pre-hospitalization symptoms

I was cleaning up my desk today, and I found a torn out sheet of a memo pad in which I had written down the symptoms I was experiencing the week before I went to the emergency room.

Sunday evening - headache
Tuesday forward - Fever, but had dropped by 3 degrees by the time I went to the hospital
                               Fatigue
                               No appetite
                               Constipation
                               Muscle Aches
Tuesday - Saturday - facial pain
                                  nausea
Tuesday and Wednesday - vomiting

I went to urgent care on Thursday and received some antibiotics, but on Friday, I developed:
chills, and the difficulty in urination began.

On Sunday, the day I went to the emergency room, I experienced dizziness, and was unable to urinate. Thank goodness I went, for five days later, i fell into a coma.

U[date on 7-19-13: This is an example of my memory problem - not really detrimental, but annoying - I hadn't realized that I wrote a similar post a couple days ago.  I don't know if I am referring to the same sheet of paper.  But I think I am.

Delirious

On of the symptoms of meningitis is mental confusion, which I didn't experience until a couple days into my hospital stay.  I actually don't remember much of my first two weeks in the hospital. I remember being admitted.  I remember calling my friend, Roberto, and asking him to let my job know.  I kind of remember talking to my parents.  And that's it until I woke up from a coma.

Apparently, before I fell into a coma, I was talking nonsense - and then not at all.  I don't remember any of it, and the only reason I know is that people tell me what had happened.  My parents were told that if I do wake up, I might not recognize them, and be severely brain damaged to boot.  But when I did wake up, my cognition was pretty much in tact.  I do have some problems with memory now, but that's pretty minor.

I guess subconsciously, I knew what state I was in, because I don't remember being surprised at my condition when I woke up.  My hands and fingers were swollen; I couldn't flex my fingers, I couldn't hold a pencil stable enough to write, I couldn't talk, I couldn't move my feet, I was on a respirator, and I had all sorts of tubes coming out of my neck and arms.  And I wasn't surprised.  I didn't know how bad a shape I was in, except for the fact that I was in excruitiating pain from the skin sensitivity.

I spent a week in the ICU unit, but I remember, probably, about 15 minutes of specifics.  And ten minutes of that is watching portions of two of the NBA Finals games.