Daily Self Monitoring Headache: Fill & Download for Free

Pneumonic Plague is a bacterial infection of the lung (rather than viral), and is treatable with a course of antibiotics if dealt with in a timely fashion. All the symptoms of a lung infection from virus or bacteria are the same: malaise, possible headache, cough, FEVER; but more reports of ‘chest pain’ seem to align with pneumonic plague.For checking oneself for viral or pneumonic issues, the following daily SELF monitor can be of help (It’s currently in use for employee’s returning to the States from ANYWHERE in China, as they are asked to stay home for two weeks; by the way, ‘healthy me’ can already check-off three of the boxes):

The first day I noticed something unusual was marked with a very sore throat at the top of my neck right behind my mouth. I had been having nasal congestion for about two days previous so I assumed it was just a really bad case of post nasal drip but it was a lot more painful than allergies would normally cause.On day two I took my temperature and it was 100.9. I thought I was coming down with the flu and went to the doctor and got tested for flu A and B, strep, and RSV that evening and all the tests came back negative. My lungs sounded clear this day and I wasn’t experiencing any breathing difficulties.Over that week I developed myalgia, random back aches in the thoracic region, and a splitting headache at the apex of my head. At the doctor’s office I had a temp of 103.1 and a blood oxygen saturation of only 89 (should be 98–100) and was diagnosed on day 4 with atypical viral pneumonia. I’m an active teenager with no preexisting health conditions who had never had any sort of pulmonary issues like asthma. They gave me a nebulizer treatment (bad idea, I learned it can aerosolize the virus and expose the doctor and office staff to it if they aren’t wearing N-95 masks), got a 5-day dose of azithromycin (antibiotic), and an albuterol rescue inhaler. I take 2–4 puffs every 4–6 hours to help open up my lungs. I was sent home and told to self-isolate.On day 8 I took my last dose of the antibiotic and had been feeling progressively better although I continued to have a painful, rattly cough, headaches, sinus pressure, and a low grade temp.On day 10 I started having high blood pressure (highest was 143/104 with a resting pulse of 119 but my doctor suggested I don’t go to the ER because they couldn’t do much else different and prescribed me the steroid prednisone to reduce the inflammation in my lungs). I have been using Tylenol since day 3 to reduce my temp but the lowest it has been is 99.3.It is now day 16 and while I feel better in comparison to when I started, I’m still having bad headaches, my lungs continue to have low crackles all over with diminished breath sounds in the RLL, I have an inspiratory and expiratory wheeze even after taking the albuterol, and I generally feel unwell. I continue to experience really bad sinus pressure that had caused me to have diminished hearing in my right ear for three whole days because of fluid accumulation.Today I can hear but have an earache, but no ear infection according to the doctor. Thankfully my mother is a healthcare worker who has the equipment at home to monitor my vitals and at this point we are just waiting for me to start getting better. I still get winded going up and down the stairs if I go quickly and by the end of the day my chest will ache, especially along my midline.Beginning around four days after my first symptoms, my mother started experiencing GI issues like diarrhea, nausea that has caused gagging but not vomiting, anorexia, and also headaches although she has not had a temp above 99.1 and is therefore expected to continue going to work. Neither of us had been been formally diagnosed with a test because in my state you can only get a test if you have a confirmed exposure or have travelled internationally in the two weeks preceding the onset of symptoms.A patient of my mother’s, with whom she was in close contact for three weeks before I began to get sick, had all the same symptoms I have and developed atypical pneumonia in under 24 hours and was admitted to the hospital for four days. He was not tested for the same reasons as I. He has since returned to my mother’s facility and he is getting better but is still weak with body aches and complains daily of chest pain.My doctor believes “beyond a shadow of doubt” that I do have coronavirus, though, because of the quickness with which my pneumonia developed and the degree to which it seems to persist despite the treatments I have been administered. I will update this if I experience anything new. Stay safe, everyone!Update: I finished my Prednisone steroid on Wedneaday night and both Thursday and Friday I experienced splitting headaches at the apex of the head, and myalgia in the thoracic and lumbar back regions, pectorals, and hamstrings. I have no reason to believe this bodily soreness is related to the exercise I'm doing because what I have been doing is relatively light and a part of my routine. The soreness is pretty intense and required me to take NSAIDs to sleep. I've also had a stiff neck both days.

First, congrats to your high degree of self-awareness, Barbara!I find it remarkable and admirable that you made the self-observed connection between “sensory overload” and insufficient sleeping. It means that you previously may have been a comparatively efficient sleeper.From the point of view of behavioural soience (Ethology, not Psychology), the functional biological reason why you initially experienced “heightened senses” and even something you may call “sensory overload” is actually very simple, natural, and scientifically predictable.With an increased neglect of sufficient daily self-energizing and self-restoration (sleep deprivation), environmental signals you previously have been able to cope with without much attention start first to seemingly become more prominent (you experience this as heightened senses) and eventually start very literally “getting on your nerves” (you experience ths as sensory overload).Here is why your brain - the ultimate master of your sensibility - deliberately (and hopefully …) does that to you on purpose:If someone repetitiously does not achieve sufficient daily self-restoration and self -energizing of body and mind ( which is the biological prupose of sleeping), the organism logically must start to generally weaken.You must start to weare out, become less and less powerful, less speedy, less focused, slower in reacting, easier overwhelmed by situations you previously mastered with ease. It is a subtle degradation that starts with the very first night you restore yoursel insufficiently.Consequently, day after day, you have less means available to cope (non-consciously) with your principally unchanged awake life situation. Everything you do when awake becomes a little harder. Some of it you may start to become consciously awarw of, most of it you initially don’t. Your brain, however most certaily does notice and consider it every moment of your life, it’s its job.As your organism becomes gradually less powerful and less agile by exhaustion and unattended wear and tear, the brain responds the only way it can to keep you safe during your awake activities: It increases your “sensibility”. What does this mean?To do its job of keeping you safe with a weakening organism, your brain has to identify potential threats earlier and take them more serious. It needs to consider that you are now weaker and slower, so that you can react earlier, still in time to cope with potential dangers.In fact, your sensibility hopefully does increase in inverse relation to the degree your physical response capacity decreases for whatever reason, e.g. lack of sufficient energy and self-restoration (sleep deprivation). Unfortunately, most people are unaware of their increased sensibility, hence, miss out an important and very reliable first emotional early warning.Let’s make an analogy to understand to what purpose this better does happen:If you are fully fit and healthy (optimally energized and self-restored), standing on the sidewalk of a busy 4-lane street with the intention to cross to the other side, you need a certain amount of sensitivity and alertness to identify an approaching gap in traffic large enough to allow you to dash to the other side safely. The sensitivity you need corresponds to your present “optimal dashing across the street capacity”, which your brain, your dashing coordinator, of course nedds to knows and continuously assesses, long before you start your dashing. You are of course unaware of your required sensibility, it is “normal” - actually minimal, because you are at that moment optimally fit, a good dasher.However, if you are standing at the same spot on the same sidewalk of the same busy road with the same traffic, but now with a broken leg, which is all plastered up and you need crutches to be able to walk at all, your organism is temporary significantly weakened (you are at that moment a super-lousy dasher). Your brain not only needs to identify a much larger gap in traffic, it also needs to identify it much earlier and needs to monitor the gap’s approaching speed more carefully to compensate for your immensely reduced speed and agility.In this situation, your brain better dramatically increases your sensibility to all environmental signals in order to coordinate your organism safely crossing the street on a broken leg and crutches. The road situation hasn’t changed at all, but your own agility and power is dramatically reduced. The situation simply requires the maximum capacity of your sensibility to remain as safe as possible.You may (or may not) consciously notice your increased sensibility, but you can be absolutely sure it must be there. You may (or may not) become aware that you are not only exceptionally cautious (sensually hyper-alert) but even afraid to cross the street. Your increased sensibility may be quite uncomfortable (fear) but it is certainly life-saving. That is why your brain does purposefully produce it. It is its biological job.Of course, not only broken legs have this effect. In fact, everything that lessens the optimal performance capacity of your organism (body and mind) in any way (which, by the way, you could only heal and restore by doing some extra sleeping) hopefully increases your vigilance and sensibility to keep you safe while awake, no matter what has caused your weakness, whether it’s an accident (broken leg) or your insufficient sleeping (sleep deprivation).The emotional message of your brain is actually very clear and simple. It says:“Don’t be awake and active for now! Don’t expose yourself to so many sensory stimuli and the angst of a seemingly dangerous environment now! You cannot handle them at this point unless you self-enegize and self-restore first (sleep !). My (your brain’s) job is to keep you safe.I (your brain) cannot talk to you with words. I need to command you with feelings. I have to make being awake uncomfortable for you somehow, so that you can consciously become aware. I need to get your aware attention somehow e.g. by making you feel “sensory overloaded” (I could also produce e.g. headaches, nausea, fatigue, etc. instead - I may do that eventually, if you don’t listen to my“sensory overload” message - and vice versa).My messagi is simple: You now need to go and do some sleeping! You need to catch up with some overdue sleeping jobs you have been accumulating and cerrying forward. It’s you getting weaker, not the sensory stimuli getting stronger! Your organism urgently needs to re-energize, repair, and restore itself - now !”What must non-negotiably happen if you keep ignoring the increasingly louder sounding emotional alarms (or even worse, if you suppress them with medication)?If one keeps neglecting self-energizing and self-restoration activity (sleeping), the inevitable path leads via increased sensibility towards persistent stress, anxiety, and ultimately depression (together with an increasing number of unavoidable health issues caused by continuously neglecting self-restoration. It is biologically simply non-negotiable. One can ignore that consciously and ignorantly (which isn’t extremely wise in my eyes) but one’s brain must never ignore it, else, one is rapidly out of the game.There is absolutely noting any doctor or psychiatrist could do about your sensory overlad (and anxiety) except attempting to suppress your deliberately uncomfortable and life-saving emotional alarms and reactively bandaging what you keep continuously causing by neglecting your self-restoration. No matter how many sleep studies they conduct or what treatments they subject you to, they simply cannot do your sleeping - your re-energizing, self-restoring, and self-healing jobs - for you.On the other hand, from both, an analytical scientific and astonishingly congruent spiritual point of view, if we humans would learn to understand and simply follow the call of our unavoidable and deliberately uncomfortable emotions (instead of fighting, supressing, or distracting ourselves from them), we humans could benefit from a fantastic and over some 200 million years of mammalian evolution refined emotional guidance system, which comes along with the anatomical design of our modern human organism, to live an easy, optimally effortless, fulfilling, healthy, and joyful life.Biologically, with respect to sensory overload (and progressively stress and anxiety) as unavoidable consequences of sleep neglect, it is simply “get the emotional message or keep suffering”. Nobody else’s business, your personal choice.That was a long answer, Barbara … I hope it does answer your question.