All I can drink is Coca Cola..

Long story short: I have 'Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease' (HFMD). 

Short story, slightly long: 

• Thursday - Migraine
• Friday - Migraine & 39 degree fever
• Saturday - Migraine & 39 degree fever
• Sunday - No migraine, no fever, but severe throat pain.. tonsillitis? Doctor at the walk-in centre gave me penicillin. 2 hours later, big blister-like spots appear on my hands.
• Monday 5am - in absolute agony, cannot swallow, cough or yawn without the reflex cutting short due to pain (like withholding yawns with cracked/broken ribs). 6am in Accident & Emergency, diagnosed with HFMD. Apparently nothing other than painkillers that can be taken as it's viral and needs to run its course.
• Monday - 1:15pm in the GP's office who cannot believe I have HFMD as 'it is only ever this severe in children.. and I've never seen it in someone's throat before'.. how reassuring. My throat is apparently ravaged by blisters and open sores, and have spread onto my tonsils too.. no wonder I'm in agony. At this time it's worth noting that I protested my struggles with the 24hour limit on cocodomol 30mg/500mg and ibuprofen, but there is nothing to be done.. My feet now give me pins-and-needles pains with every step as the soles of my feet are lined with red spots and blisters, as is my face and inside my nostrils.
• Tuesday 2am - Repeat of Monday's nighttime woes.
• Tuesday 3pm - I discover that Coca-Cola helps to numb the pain in my throat! Amazing!! I am able to eat something for the first time since Friday, a cup of soup sachet. It strips away all the good the coke did and I'm back to square 1 with pain but at least I've eaten something..
• I remember this article I read: http://goo.gl/AVJN10 where an African doctor used sugar to treat open wounds, perhaps there's some method to the madness?
• Oh by the way, difflam (used as a direct spray to help numb the pain from tonsillitis) is about as useful as someone trying to speed up their computer by splitting their single hard drive into 2 RAID 0 partitions. Or for the non-techy people, a chocolate fireguard.
• Tuesday - I run out of ibuprofen and I'm in for one of the worst days of my life in pain management. Night time is the worst, I can only take 4 lots of the cocodomol and ibuprofen, and 4 hours after taking it, it's like being hit by a train between your ears and neck. I wake up at night like clockwork writhing in agony, moaning while my wife looks on sympathetically, she can't do anything to help because I'm so contagious I'm sleeping on the couch.

And here we are today, Wednesday. I've visited who I now call 'The Silent Doctor'.. I don't think I need to describe how that meeting went. I walked out with a prescription for a stronger anti-inflammatory and a very condescending reaction to my protests of pain.

The worst thing about this is that I don't think medical professionals realize how much pain this is causing me, on the NHS website it doesn't even say that adults can get HFMD, let alone how to treat or manage it.

If anyone else out there is struggling with something similar, perhaps give ice-cold Coca-Cola in very small sips a go, it may take a few mouthfuls but it can give you 10-15 minutes of blissful 6/10 pain rather than the usual 9 or 10. Dairy milk, completely dissolved in a lot of saliva and gently swallowed has allowed me to eat something.. but this is better than absolutely nothing.

Thank goodness HFMD kills the appetite, otherwise 1 meal in 5 days would be making me crazy.