#rigors

“What we need to comprehend is that the rigors and delights of the journey are the path and the destination.”

Reaching out to the social media hivemind for a hope that someone has an answer for me.Do any of y'all who get (or give!) IVIG infusions have experience with NON-Demerol methods of controlling rigors reactions to them? Particularly interested in hearing your experiences if you've been given tramadol and/or clonidine. 

I recently had a fever weekend. Yeah it was bad, but really, it made me realize how little I know about fevers. Let’s learn together. 

What is a fever? It is the bodies response to kicking something out with heat. For me, there was a possible complication as I was recovering from my miscarriage, and I had an infection I was fighting. After a couple of days of not feeling well, the fever kicked in. I was able (after a couple of days) to pick up on how my body deals with it: 

Stages: 

Normal

Clammy/Rising Temperature

Sweats and Chills/Increasing Temperature

Rigors

What does one do? Keep an eye on it, if it gets past 104, go to the ER. If it goes on for 3 days (or longer), go to a doctor or ER. Before you get to the point that a professional is involved, you would take tylenol to reduce the fever. Drink water to stay hydrated. Rest. Dress comfortably and use a light blanket as needed. Warm/Cold shower or bath to bring your temperature down. Your temperature needs to rise to take care of business, but it can’t stay that high for long. 

Also, I have never had fever dreams before. Really I don’t get fevers like this, I might have had scarlet fever as a kid but I don’t remember much about it and my mom is awful about my health as kid (plus no memory of my childhood). Fever dreams tend to be really extreme versions of your existing dreams, dreams are already weird. Mine were normal? But like scary as hell. Like I was doing things in my sleep and thinking about things, but unable to recall the original conversation? I was sweating through my clothes and made notes to clean the sheets the next day, only to find the sheets were fine the next day? Normal is almost scarier than weird.