The past two days have been a literal blur for me. I started feeling the chills and off-feeling early on and as time went on, it just grew worse. Eventually I started having severe GI issues, pretty regular headaches, a fever, hot-flashes and chills, profuse sweating – all in all very not fun. I skipped out on pretty much all food the first day, I just couldn’t risk anything. I then realized that I needed some calories to keep going so I opened a can of Coca Cola, which usually either clears my system or ultimately resolves my problems one way or another. After holding down several bouts of severe nausea I found a place to lay down that felt good. For some reason the big blue couch in my living room, some throw pillows, and a big blue comforter was EXACTLY what I needed. I pounded down at least 4 hours of solid dead-to-the-world sleep and felt far better when I awoke. After I got over whatever hit me, I figure the likely suspects are either e. coli or cryptosporidium, I felt better. I started with a glass of milk, then moved up to toast. This morning I hazarded cooked oatmeal and that wasn’t a problem.

Tomorrow I will return to work after two days of being sick. I bust on Western for a lot, mostly petty internal bickering and annoyances, but when it comes to being really sick and needing time to recover, its worth it’s weight in gold, to have over 480 accumulated hours of Sick Leave available to use, it’s just one possible stressor that is nowhere to be found.

Everything is better now. My stomach feels fine, my system feels fine, and everything is working as nature intended. I don’t know where I caught the bacteria but I know it was a bacteria. Something that survived stomach acid and set off an attempted coup in my system. With lots of rest and a really quite on-top-of-things immune system I bounced back handily.

I missed my post-a-day yesterday, but there was just no way, I wasn’t able to type let alone flop off the couch. I don’t like being sick, it makes me incredibly emotional, unbelievably needy, and a giant mush in pretty much every regard – assuming I have enough energy available for any of it. Scott was wonderful, as well as all our friends who came to visit and enjoy Glee Night with us, but my two boys, Owien and Griffin were very cute. The minute I would flop down they’d leap on wherever I was and curl up and sleep with me, as if to protect me. So unbearably cute.

With luck I can avoid the matrix of things I did two days ago that got me sick, I have some suspicions and I can do things to avoid having to run into those things again. I hate having to feel that way. I don’t ever want to do it again.