Trenchmouth

WWIII just erupted in Jared’s mouth. His gums are severely inflamed, he has black spots around some of his teeth, his lymph nodes are swollen, and he’s had a fever for over 24 hours. Shit is hitting the fan folks.

We like to sleep with the windows open. Well, last night an arctic blast crept in. Temperatures dropped from 65 yesterday to upper 20s overnight. Jared woke up shivering and slammed the window shut, and after that he could not get warm. I covered him in 3 blankets and he was still shivering and had shallow breathing. Eventually, he managed to fall asleep again.

Poor Jared slept all day and didn’t even get to enjoy the exhilaration of the first day of spring in Chicago. I on the other hand, got up and went to work in the lovely blizzard with snow and wind slapping me in the face.

When I got home from work today, Jared was still in bed and his clothes were drenched in sweat, he was pale as a corpse, and his pee was dark orange/red indicating severe dehydration.

At that point, I freaked out and said that we need to go to the doctor. I looked up some information online and it looks like Jared has trenchmouth aka Acute necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis. It was named after a condition that soldiers in WWI often acquired during trench warfare.

Every article I read about this indicates that smoking, stress and poor dental hygiene are contributing factors, which makes sense because I’m sure the guys in the trenches were smoking a lot and of course were under stress. I was pretty pissed when Jared decided to take up smoking again briefly…now I’m livid.

By the time we got our shit together tonight it was too late to go to a doctor, but tomorrow morning we are going to urgent care to get antibiotics. Fuck.

-L

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