On Saturday night, I was feeling unsteady on my feet and decided to go downstairs to get a mug of hot tea. Without real awareness of the placement of my feet, I ended up tripping down the stairs and twisting my right ankle, along with scraping up my left hand. Carpet burns are strange things. How does something so fluffy create such monstrous gashes? That night concluded with an Advil for my body aches, Neosporin for my scrapes, and reassurance that tomorrow will bring more coordination.
On Sunday, the headache and chills began. I am the type of person who sleeps with an electric blanket (thanks YDY!) most nights, because I can't seem to maintain enough body heat. But it was still pretty ridiculous to have four layers of clothing, two comforters, and electric blanket on some of the warmest days the Bay Area has seen. I had hot soup for dinner. I finished re-reading A Thousand Splendid Suns in bed and cried a bucket. My parents thought I was the most miserable creature, ever.
On Monday, I called into work, sick. Fever and body aches generally don't translate into good productivity at the. busiest. medical. office. ever. I knew that I was leaving my coworkers in a lurch, but in the January-February months when everyone was taking vacations and changing their school schedules, I took on a 4-person staff load by myself. I'm not really sure how I did it. So I figured that having 3 of 4 medical assistants on staff would be just fine. I was right. The sun rose and the sun set, and I didn't hear of any casualty reports on the news. I took Nyquil before bed, hoping to have a restful night's sleep.
Three hours later, at 2:00 am, the vomiting began. I was jolted awake in a cold sweat with an urgency to empty my stomach. I could hear my stomach saying, "Haha! Joke's on you, I've been empty all day." Cue the bile. Or maybe it was leftover Nyquil, I don't know (green is green?). I sat at my computer bleary-eyed for hours, and got confirmation that we are no longer in college--no one is online at that hour. Good thing I saved my episode of Revenge. When that ended, I decided to drink some water. Bad idea. By the time my stomach stopped rebelling, it was 5:30am and I was reading Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (thanks, O!). I got through Chapter Two: Jellied Stocks and I decided that I was calm enough to sleep. Funny enough, I was able to read about food and not get nauseous. Even gross French delicacies like jellied stocks.
This morning, I decided to go to the grocery to buy some Gatorade and chicken noodle soup. It was bright and sunny out, and I hadn't left the house in days. I felt like a vampire. A dehydrated, still slightly nauseous, weak-kneed vampire. I decided to walk the half mile to Safeway instead of drive, since I felt uneasy operating a motor vehicle in my current state. Going downhill to the store was easy. Coming home wasn't. I had forgotten to factor in the weight of my groceries...darned liquids! Those 1-quart bottles of Gatorade weighed like, ten pounds each. So I only bought two. And had to start drinking one on the way home (along with a short sit-down break in front of someone's house...sigh). Feeling better, I trudged home and proceeded to watch five hours of daytime television. I'd say it was a productive way to spend the last day of April.
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