Just Illin'

Station break.

This week I have been severely sick. The first thing I did when I could physically stand up without losing my composure was take two home tests for coronavirus, about 2 hours apart, both negative (best 2 out of 3). My next suspect was possible food poisoning as my body rejected any attempt to intake even the small amounts of water I was able to gulp in between periods of long inactivity and running into my lysol coated bathroom, breathing like I had just climbed a volcano. Either way I was incapacitated, unable to eat or drink, sweating and freezing, head spinning like the early guest at a new years house party vowing into space to never do whatever it was that brought me to this point again.

Now I know from the duration of this illness it is likely a variation of a norovirus, which is a digestive tract virus that can be transmitted by contaminated food and surfaces and is highly contagious. This is said to last 72 hours. While the most severe effects did, indeed, last three grueling and sadness filled days I am at the fourth day and the effects of being dehydrated coupled with what is left of this nasty “stomach flu” are still substantial.

I am not positive if I was to take a therapeutic, as I opted to wait before going to the doctor, when I began to feel slightly better the second day. On the third day I had my appetite back and that’s where I fucked up hardcore. I ate three slices of pizza, voraciously, after only having ingested chicken stock and 3 packs of saltines over the prior two days. This resulted in me waking up in the middle of the night wondering if I should call an ambulance. The acid reflux and resultant “heartburn” was so bad, coupled with the clammy freezing, that I was about 10% concerned I could be experiencing a “widowmaker” cardiac event.

I’m generally not a religious person, I try to use the brains and thumbs that whatever force or chain of reactions created us gave us to make the most of my time here on this rock filled with perilous and dangerous external agents. When you are running an on/off minor fevor, not eating, dehydrating, and moreover desperate you may find yourself beginning to pray a la “Ricky Bobby” in Taladega Nights.

I will be okay, and I am drinking plenty of fluids, but I am not looking forward to the next 12 hours or what new phases of “holy fuck what is going to happen next”. Please wash your hands, take sanitizer everywhere, also where a mask (just saying), get vaccinated, and for fucks sake don’t carpool.

-be well, Ted.