Germtacular

I had plans to do year end/new year posts.  But I visited friends and ate too much crab and played too much LEGO Indiana Jones, instead of blogging.  Then I had a friend visit.  Both of these were good things.  But at some point, I picked up some germs and the hair trigger on my nose sprouted a sinus infection.  I was pretty miserable with that on wednesday and thursday, but still managed to get some work done at work thanks to tylenol and sudafed and sinus rinse.  I was starting to feel better thursday night. But with the hope of not oversleeping friday, I didn't take some meds to help me sleep, and I lay mostly awake for the night. My guts were burning a bit because I caved and ate an orange. When I woke up friday, I didn't feel good, but assumed it was just residual sick and sleepiness.  [Do not read further if you are squeamish.]


Until I threw up.  A lot.  The odd thing was that I could identify things from 2-3 days beforehand.  They hadn't been digested AT ALL.  I drank some tea to try and calm things and get the gak taste out of my mouth.  I called the gastroenterologist and got some good advice from the nurse practitioner, who spoke with me for about 20 minutes.  She chuckled a bit when I described going off my diet while on vacation and sneaking in a little salad, a bit of corn on the cob and an orange.  I agreed it's hilarious that I'm confessing to breaking my diet by eating salad, but that's what seemed to be the most problematic.  She told me to get digestive enzymes either at the local health food store or by prescription, then wrote a prescription and request for testing my pancreas for enzyme production.  I told her I'd come get it.

Then I fell asleep for the rest of the morning.  When I woke up, I yakked up the rest of the food in a series of desperately unpleasant purges.  After that, I was too weak to do anything until after the doc's office closed, and they were too far away for me to feel comfortable driving there anyway.  I managed to get to Lassen's for some digestive enzymes, then stopped by the McDonald's for some comfort food - 2 plain hamburgers and a small fry.  I was tempted also by the little blizzard thing too.   I managed to get down and keep down about a third of a baby oreo shake (say 2-3 oz), then about half the small fries and half a hamburger.  So far so good with that.  I slept longer on the couch, then slept in bed, still semi-sitting up (a position I hate to sleep in, btw).

Today, I drank some tea and that didn't feel great but it wasn't awful.  After sleeping most of the morning, I made some grits with brown sugar.  Those went down ok but only for half of the quarter cup I made. A little more sleeping and I tried more grits and enzymes later.  A little more HGTV design show watching and some more sleep and I finally started to feel gross externally (which is a good sign in that I was feeling well enough to care) and decided to brave taking a shower.

Of all things, my doorbell rang while I was in the shower. I should have guessed who it was - because the ex-boyfriend would almost always manage to show up while I was in the shower, and he did it again.  I haven't seen him in a year and he decided to stop by to say hi;  I'm still not sure why.  I dried off, got dressed, let him in, showed him the bathroom reno, ("Whoa, it's like a room in here now!") and we chatted for a while. I offered him a drink.  I had a couple of low presence beers on hand and we had those.  Strangely, the beer was the most soothing thing I've ingested in a few days.

I sent him on his way and decided to test out my other hamburger (frozen since yesterday) on my beer soothed tummy.  I got the whole thing down!!!  Of course, now I'm washing it down with mango nectar, so it's anyone's guess if it'll stay down or come up.

But that's the current sitch.  I was extremely sick yesterday and felt like death warmed over.  If I still felt like that today, or stopped being able to ingest liquids, I would have checked myself into a hospital, but I'm feeling somewhat better.  and I can drink beer, so all's not lost.

Here's hoping that despite getting off to a germy start, that I am less sick this year than last year because last year had a lot of sickness related misery.  And I have stuff to do!  People to see!  And I want them (and you) to be healthy.