Mastitis?

First...I'm fine.  If I did have mastitis I fixed it and I have it no longer.

But I wanted to share my little story.

Almost 14 months nursing and I've had a plugged milk duct twice...that's it...that's as far as my nursing woes go.

UNTIL...

Yesterday afternoon, roughly 3pm I notice a pain in my right boob.  Pain came out of nowhere, hurts like a bitch and there's a hard knot where the pain is.  

Oh great...a plugged duct.  No problem I think to myself, I've had these before, I'll just massage that bad boy out of there. 

Come 5pm I'm starting to feel a little...peculiar.  My stomach feels like it's in my throat, I feel sort of lightheaded and fuzzy...but I power through.

By 6pm I have to call my husband away from his work (he was working at home luckily) to come help me because I HAVE TO LIE DOWN.  I'm feeling REALLY weird.  I'm starting to get the chills and feel very achy, almost like I have the flu.

At 7pm we get the baby down and I'M DONE.  I get on the couch next to the roaring fire and curl up into a ball and I CAN'T STOP SHIVERING.

As soon as I started shivering I JUST KNEW that that damn knot in my boob was the cause of all my discomfort.  I'd been massaging away since 3pm and I'd spent the last 2 hours trying to get the baby to nurse exclusively on that right boob but all to no avail, the knot wasn't budging.

I choked down dinner, shivering so bad it was almost impossible to eat and by 8pm I drew THE HOTTEST BATH I'VE EVER HAD.

Completely random sidenote here...why is it DRAWing a bath?  Why do we say draw?

Anyway...

FINALLY I was warm.  I stayed in there for 20 minutes but as soon as that water started to cool down I was shivering again.

Somehow I made it into bed, got myself dressed with the help of my husband, and buried myself under 3 blankets.  Luckily it was also super warm up there because we'd had a fire going all day.  But I was still freezing.  77 degrees, 3 blankets, my skin feels like it's on fire and I'm absolutely freezing.

Out comes the pump, I'm going to get that knot out of there if it kills me!  So I start pumping away, trying to massage the lump while I pump.

Suddenly there's a popping noise and a splash inside the pump.  DID I JUST UNPLUG MY CLOG?  I didn't imagine it would make such an obvious noise but it very much sounded and looked like I'd just unclogged my duct.

Sure enough about half hour later I can suddenly FEEL how hot it is up in that room.  I start peeling off the layers of clothing, one piece at a time, then slowly one by one each of the blankets come off until I'm so hot that I have to open the window because it's still 77 degrees.

AND THEN about 11pm I start sweating.  The sweating was the sign for me that it was over, the clog with it's accompanying bacteria was gone.

Just like that, as quickly as it started, it was over.  I was fine.  I went to sleep and woke up with nothing more than a slightly sore boob from all the massaging.

So, was that mastitis?  Anyone else had mastitis for a whopping 8 hours?