Do any of the symptoms here look familiar?

(this is from the valley fever survivor web site)


Flu-like symptoms

Malaise/chronic exhaustion
Fever

Muscle aches
Shortness of breath/wheezing

Muscle stiffness
Coughing (can be chronic and severe)

Joint pain
Coughing up blood

Joint swelling
Chest pain/pressure

Joint stiffness
Night sweats/Chills

Leg/ankle/foot swelling
Headaches

Photosensitivity
Nausea

*Vision problems/blindness
Loss of appetite

**Neck stiffness
Weight loss

**Inability to focus and concentrate
Rash

**Foot drop or partial paralysis
Burning sensations at various parts of the body (foot, joints, etc.)

**Severe head pain (as opposed to a normal headache)

*This can be a sign of lesions in the eye, but also a side effect of Vfend (voriconazole), a medication use to treat Valley Fever.
**These could be a sign of meningitis from Valley Fever and may therefore require aggressive antifungal therapy.

Valley Fever is often misdiagnosed as cancer, tuberculosis, or bacterial pneumonia. It can disseminate (spread) throughout the body. The fact that the symptoms of Valley Fever vary so greatly is a part of the reason misdiagnosis is so common. In addition, the lack of training and lack of accurate information available to doctors is a contributing factor in the frequent misdiagnoses of this devastating illness.

The disease can cause hydrocephalus (harmful pressure from spinal fluid on the brain), verrucose ulcers (wartlike outgrowths on the surface of organs and skin), arthralgias (joint pains), myalgias (muscle pains), otomycosis (fungal infection of the external ear canal), hypercalcemia (extra calcium in the blood that can be fatal) and other terrible conditions.

The simplest, fastest description of Valley Fever is that the disease can create lesions or inflammation in nearly any part of the body. Lytic lesions involve rupture of cell membranes, keratotic ulcers are scaly and wartlike, and the disease can create lesions on other internal organs or manifest in visible, hideous skin conditions.

Depending on where Valley Fever causes inflammation within the body, a patient may experience arthritis, conjunctivitis, endocarditis, meningitis, myocarditis, osteomyelitis, pleuritis, tenosynovitis, vasculitis or a variety of other painful or life-threatening conditions. Meningitis, the swelling of the brain's lining, is universally regarded as the most deadly and dangerous form of Valley Fever. It occurs frequently in patients who have the disease spread from their lung.

Valley Fever usually starts in the lungs and can disseminate to virtually any part of the body such as:

skin lymph nodes
bones eyes
joints heart
spine kidney
brain thyroid
liver gastrointestinal tract
testicles genitourinary tract
prostate

Valley Fever in Animals

The above symptoms also apply to Valley Fever in animals. Since animals can't express that they have these problems as clearly as humans can, pet owners should watch their animals for any of these symptoms.

The most prevalent signs of veterinary Valley Fever are respiratory distress, coughing, fever, malaise, loss of appetite, lameness, and unexplained personality changes. These could be particularly significant if the animal was exposed to soil in an endemic area.

Valley Fever disseminates very often in infected dogs. Many more cats are being diagnosed than in the past. All mammals are subject to contracting Valley Fever. However, to date, there have not been any reported cases of Valley Fever in birds.

If your pet shows some of these symptoms and lives in or has visited an endemic area, we recommend you contact your veterinarian and suggest the possibility of a coccidioidomycosis infection. This could save your pet's life.


You are a little north of the usual area for Valley Fever but if people in northern Utah can get it, (recent paper showing spread to Dinosaur Natl Monument)

I am sure you can. Do you visit dusty places? Or have you been in any dust storms or been near construction sites that didn't take dust control measures (wetting down dust)

Have you travelled to the southern part of your state (lower elevation?) or gotten severe flu like symptoms, ever? Or have you ever driven through or flown over/stopped over in southern Arizona, New Mexico, California (especially the Central Valley) or Texas, especially Phoenix, AZ.?


You should look up the symptoms and if it looks appropriate ask your doctor to give you a "cocci comp fix" test for coccidioidomycosis. If you have it, you would want to see a good infectious disease doc ASAP. I am sure that there are doctors in New Mexico who are familiar with it. You may have to look a little. If you have disseminated VF, its important to get treatment.

I am not a doctor and basically, just saw that you are in the Southwest, so please DON'T take what I am saying as medical advice.. do your own research and get tested for it. It can cause a huge variety of symptoms and despite the mainstream propaganda, with current treatments and certainly with someone never even having realized they had it.. (it often just seems like the flu..then it goes away) However, it doesn't ever actually go away, so people who have had it always need to be on the lookout for it coming back. When it comes back, its often as a result of some kind of stressor.

For some people it can be very dangerous. (people who are immunocompromised)