Body Temp Regulation (Did I almost die?)

Factual Questions
1

So I’m out in Ohio this weekend poking around the house we want to buy. Outside the temperature is about 10-15 degrees F. Simple enough.

During the 7 hour drive there it was snowy and icy and we slid off the road into ditches twice (Lady Chance says I do an excellent shriek, FWIW). Then I spend some time at Baby Kate’s new daycare filling out forms and then poking around the heated house but for at least half the time I’m in the unheated basement or attic looking for things the inspection should check. Simple enough.

We pick up some stuff to eat at a drive in and head back to the hotel, food in hand.

When we get to the hotel I’m OK…but as I’m walking from the car to the lobby (about 30 feet or so) suddenly everything goes sort of fuzzy.

Waiting at the lobby elevator my teeth start to chatter uncontrollably and my mid-section starts to shiver HUGELY and completely beyond my ability to stop. Lady Chance asks if I’m all right and I tell her I must have hit a wall…my core temp must be too low or something.

Up in the suite with her and the kid I can’t eat. I look at the food and my stomach is rumbling but I have no motivation to eat at all.

So Lady Chance puts me to bed in some clothes and puts the covers over me and turns the heat up REALLY high in the room. This is about 7:30-9PM.

I wake up at 9:45 absolutely blazing hot. Sweaty and boiling I figure now I’m OVERHEATING. I wake Lady Chance up and she says I feel like a stove. I strip down and hit the bathroom and run my head under a cool shower for a bit but I still feel like I’m boiling.

I go back to bed naked and stay on TOP of the covers and pass one of those horrible, endless half-awake/half-asleep nights. During the sleep parts I’m stuck in a recurring nightmare of being in one of Piers Anthony’s more terrible novels (Ugh!).

I wake up with an enormous head-cold. Stuffed up, headachy, body aches, sore throat. Still gut rumbling hungry but not interested in eating (which is a weird space to be in).

Now, Monday, I STILL have the cold and am staying home from work.

So tell me…what the hell happened there? Did my internal sensors stop regulating or what? Did I actually come close to freezing to death or burning up?

That was one scary night, I’ll tell you.

2

Did you see a doc Jonathan? It may be a good idea. Your body has a built in homeostasis regulator…for you to have had a core temp too cold you’d probably have to be naked in slush for a while. Seriously, I live in a very cold part of the country this time of year…I was working outside the other day in 0 degrees and had a flanel and t-shirt on. I was very very cold then I went in and immediatley started to burn up…It’s not uncommon, the trick is to do it slowly. My guess is you had something else going on inside…like a cold or some other bug. I’d go to a clinic. good luck

3

I had a similar experience once, but it was in August as opposed to the dead of winter. I went in cycles from uncontrollable, teeth-chattering chills to full-out drenching sweats in a matter of hours. This continued for about a day or so then mysteriously went away. A week or so later, I was at the doctor’s office for what I thought was an unrelated problem when it was determined I had “walking pneumonia”. It went away quickly enough with the proper administration of the appropriate medicines. So I’ll second Phlosphr’s advice and say go see a doctor sooner rather than later.

SC

4

Having had Pneumonia and been at various stages of hypothermia, it sounds similar to my pneumonia experience.

5

The symptoms sound very similar to those I had once. I just attributed it to the flu; I’d never heard of walking pneumonia at the time.

I went to work one morning feeling just fine. After about an hour it started to feel cold, so I asked my office mate if he was cold. He said he wasn’t so I just went back to work. After another 30 minutes it I was feeling really cold but no one else was bothered by the temperature. By now I was wondering if something was going on with me even though I felt fine other than being cold. I told my boss that maybe I was coming down with something and just to be sure I’d better go home. By the time I reached my car - maybe a 10 minute walk - I was shivering and by the time I got home was shivering uncontrollably and barely able to drive. I raced inside, turned all the heaters up full blast and got under every blanket I could find. My shivering was extreme, even bizarre. My entire body jerked around and I was making these huh-huh-huh-huh-huh sounds with every breath, but other than feeling intensely cold I felt fine.

This went on for about an hour, and I was absolutely exhausted. Finally the shivering started to ease up, but at the same time I began to feel extremely nauseated. After a while I made myself literally crawl to the bathroom, which was probably 100 degrees by then. I just had time to turn off the heater when I started purging from every orifice – vomit, diarrhea, sweating, watery eyes, runny nose – hell, I’m surprised ear wax didn’t ooze from my ears like toothpaste.

Once the purging ended, I was boiling hot. Now I had to shut down all the heaters and open the windows. I got back into bed and sweated for another hour. And that was it. The next day I had a brutal headache and sore muscles, but nothing else. It was one of the weirdest experiences I’ve ever been through.

6

I am not a medical doctor, but from my own experiences, if you’re feeling cold because of an illness, turning up the temperature of the room will not help. It’s much better to put on more clothes and pile on the blankets. Because eventually the higher ambient temperature will lead to situations like:

Your body needs a cool-temperature source or be able evaporate sweat in order to properly thermo-regulate. Covering up completely and turning up the room temperature effectively prevents this.

Extra clothes and/or blankets make it easy to stay a comfortable temperature, since you can add/remove them very quickly.

As for the original post: my guess is the long day of driving and cold temperatures tired you and weakened your immune system. Did you eat anything before that evening? You didn’t say, but a lack of food calories in a cold environment can really take a lot out of you. Then you picked up a bug at the daycare. (Anywhere young kids congregate is potentially infectious.) And a little while later you were sick.