Googling saved writer from ravages of rhabdo.
Sitting in a warm bath, Googling “sore calves” and “muscle pain can’t walk” on my phone, I wondered, how did I get here?
My feet were throbbing. My calves were swollen, and putting my heels on the ground sent an excruciating shock of pain through my legs.
I did one workout, and yet I had spent the morning wobbling around the house on my tiptoes before deciding there was no way I’d make it to work.
My fiancé, Willie, ran the bath, where I sat mostly silent and purposely shifting my phone from his view as I searched my symptoms and surfed the Internet in what I thought was a hypochondriac panic.
Yes, I felt silly.
Willie had studied sports medicine and played college football. He was a conditioned athlete, who had endured far worse than achy calves, I thought. Was I being a drama queen?
It didn’t matter. Paranoia would override my scathed pride, and I continued searching.
He doesn’t call me “Google Queen” for nothin’.
I read about delayed-onset muscle soreness, terrifying tears, pulls and strains, but only later that night would my worry and research lead me to “rhabdo.” I was half-convinced that I had it, and though I feared I was being a typical worrywart, this time, a combination of a panicfueled internet search and listening to my body saved my kidneys.
On a Saturday night in April — after ditching a consistent gym routine in favor of late nights at work, evenings well spent eating crawfish and drinking beer (because crawfish season, duh!) and just normal life lethargy, we resolved we were going to the gym.
Willie and I worked out separately that night. He headed for the StairMaster, and I set off for the gym stairs, using each step to do five calf raises with just my body weight. I felt accomplished once I reached the top — surprised and half-impressed that I had done at least 100 in a row. My legs felt wobbly, but it didn’t stop me from running two miles on the treadmill and completing a full-body workout.
I walked out of the gym feeling good — so good, I urged Willie to remind me how I felt the next time I made excuses to ditch our gym plans. We downed a Muscle Milk, showered, had dinner and then went to bed.
The next day, I was less enthusiastic. The soreness set in.
I dragged my slippers on our wood floors, making an annoying hissing sound, to avoid the pain and then walked on my tiptoes to relieve some of the tension. I laughed it off, but by Monday morning, I could have cried.
My calves felt tight and constricted. I could barely make it out of bed. Willie helped me in and out of the bath, slathered my calves in Biofreeze and massaged them. He gave me Advil.
Nothing worked, so I admitted defeat.
I emailed one of my editors to say that I had hurt one of my legs (two legs just seemed hard to believe!) and that I’d have to work from home for the day.
I spent the day on the couch — calves tight and swelling to the size of hard softballs, shifting myself in numerous positions to try to ease the aches.
That night, Willie and I spent an hour stretching my legs out. It seemed like a victory — I could finally walk, but as soon as I sat down, my legs locked up again, and I was back on my tiptoes.
I decided to rest, but my mind was still spinning. Back to Google I went, finally setting my eyes on the worst but most reasonable diagnosis considering my bizarre symptoms — rhabdomyolysis.
Called “rhabdo” for short, the potentially life-threatening illness can be caused by quite a few different things — medication, high-impact crashes, dehydration, sickle cell trait (which I have yet to rule out) and overexertion. I learned, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that a person can work his or her muscles so hard that the affected muscle begins to break down and releases proteins called myoglobins in the bloodstream. If left untreated, the myoglobins could severely clog and damage the kidneys and liver.
Gasp.
I hadn’t drunk enough water that weekend. The three glasses of red wine likely didn’t help, and maybe, just maybe, 100-plus calf raises wasn’t a good idea, I thought.
I quietly went down a rabbit hole while lying next to my beau, reading about women who had tried cycling classes for the first time and intense Crossfitstyle exercises, only to come down with this so-called “rhabdo.”
I had all of their symptoms — the muscle soreness and stiffness, the swelling, the aches — but my urine hadn’t changed color. Yet.
That night, after struggling to make it to the toilet, I saw that my pee was a deep yellow.
The next morning, I peed in a plastic cup to get a good look — my urine looked like watereddown iced tea. I downed cups of water and tried to grin and bear it before resolving that I would sneak off to the emergency room that morning in embarrassment. If it was nothing, I’d go to work after and grin and bear it. I texted my brother to let him know, persuaded him not to take me to the hospital and drove myself to the ER.
When I arrived, I mentioned nothing about rhabdo, and instead just described my symptoms. The doctor seemed skeptical as he stretched my legs, resolving that after seeing me wobble around he’d likely prescribe a muscle relaxer and send me on my way if the labs came back normal. They didn’t.
“You have something called rhabdomyolysis,” he said once he returned.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” I groaned.
My blood work showed that I had more than 40,000 creatine kinase enzymes, or CKs, in my blood, exceeding the normal level, which typically resides around 150. According to my doctor, a person might have around 5,000 CK after running a marathon; mine was more than eight times that level, and my liver showed inflammation.
The bright side? Searching the internet and listening to my body saved me a whole lot of trouble, according to my kidney specialist. Had I waited just a few days later to go to the hospital, my kidneys could have failed, and I would have needed dialysis. Luckily, they were in fine shape, but still, my loved ones and I were in shock. Most of us had never heard of rhabdo.
That week, I missed my grandfather’s funeral and a birthday party for my grandparents — doctors’ orders. I spent the next five days in the hospital (with Willie by my side and visits from family), being pricked with needles to check my blood levels once or twice a day and receiving bags on bags of fluid to flush out the protein that had made its way to my bloodstream. I drank as much water as I could (this meant peeing every 30 minutes to an hour, even at night), and I attempted to get rest so that I could get back to normal.
Google was just as reliable as ever. I read several studies on rhabdo and joined a Facebook group for people who are in recovery and being treated. It gave me a place to compare, commiserate and converse about the bizarreness and uncertainty of it all. Doctors have told me that the average person will never get rhabdo, and yet there so many of us were — “average” and lying in beds with our muscles dying on us. Somehow, the group was comforting.
Since then, I’ve recovered, but it’s taken time.
As excited as I was to be home and do ordinary things again, simple tasks such as driving and folding laundry were exhausting during my first week out of the hospital. Muscles that I thought were unaffected, including my abs, were suddenly sore despite not working out. I slept more than usual, and my calves still ached slightly in the morning for weeks.
There have also been some changes, some of which could be semipermanent. Doctors have advised me to drink 1.5 to 3 liters of water a day (I’m not great at this, so I sometimes drink Pedialyte or Gatorade-like drinks to get electrolytes back in my system). I’m much more cautious of how I treat my body, and now I’m forced to listen to the signs it gives when something is wrong. Just a couple of weeks ago, after what seemed like two days of light exercise, I had to tap out and rest for the remainder of the week after soreness — and the fear that I had rhabdo-ed myself again — set in. I have also become obsessed with monitoring the color of my pee, and I can literally feel when I’m dehydrated now — my calves, which will tighten up if I don’t drink enough water, have become my unofficial indicator.
I also realized how ridiculous it was that I tried to hide what I was going through from my loved ones in fear of being dramatic or a hypochondriac. That unfounded fear isn’t worth my health, and it’s important for all of us to listen to our bodies and know them inside and out.
And as my story proves, ain’t nothing wrong with a little Google.