Monday, February 20, 2006

The Plague Strikes

The observant amongst you will have noticed there's been a bit of a lull in posting here. This'll make up for it though.

I nearly died last week. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I felt absolutely awful.

I've been struck down with a norovirus, according to my doctor.

It all started on Monday 13 February with a little light nausea mid-morning. This wasn't helped by a nosebleed on the tube on the way in to work, but that's incidental.

By lunchtime it was time for some paracetamol. A general sense of unwellbeing had set in, and I took the rest of the afternoon off as I was just sitting around groaning.

However, things took a turn for the worse here. By the time I reached home I threw my guts up into the toilet, despite not eating anything at all that day. Reminders of previous meals passed my senses. As the vomiting became more violent, it started to come through my nose.

This is unpleasant at the best of times, but the fact that I was sober was only beaten by its result in simultaneous nosebleeding and vomtting. Which do you try and stop first? Doing both at the same time is nigh-on impossible - breathing becomes far too difficult. It can be hard anyway during extreme vomiting, I'm sure most people can recall a time where they've been gasping for breath while essential nourishment abandons ship.

This was extremely unpleasant, but fortunately I managed to stem both the tides before death set in.

At this point I retired to bed, but not before documenting the day's activities on the whiteboard for my flatmates to share in.

Then came the sweating. Lots of it. As if I hadn't leaked enough fluid already, every last drop decided to evacuate.

This was closely followed by shaking, with every muscle in my body aching. I drifted in and out of sleep for hours.

In the middle of the night, I awoke suddenly with an urge to pee. I lay still for a while as the sweating, shaking and aching were still going strong. Finally I stumbled out of the bedroom and into the light.

The discomfort and disorientation were immense. I literally crawled towards the bathroom. When I finally reached it, I lay on the cool floor. I could not summon any part of me to stand and releive myself, such was the dizziness and faitness. I lay there imagining the ppol of vomit, blood and urine that someone would find me in the next morning. Minutes passed. I may have lost conciousness for a minute or two.

Fortunately I managed to drag myself to the seat in the end. When the last contents of my bladder had waved me goodbye, it was was colon's turn. Nasty diarrhoea oozed out of my shaking body.

I crawled back to bed, and stayed there for all of Tuesday, sweating and shaking.

Stupidly, I went to work on Wednesday, despite still being unable to keep any food down. Dry retching periodically, I completed a day at work somehow.

Throughout Thursday and Friday I drank water, sweated water and shitted water. My body was a solid free zone. You know there's nothing left when your shit looks clear enough to drink. Anything that went in my mouth came out soon afterwards - dry crackers, bread, anything.

The thought of food was beyond me until Friday night, when I managed to eat a quarter of a tin of Heinz tomoato soup.

Praise be, this was my turning point. It took the whole weekend to get my body used to consuming food again. I ate nothing from Sunday to Saturday.

So there we are. Nasty stuff. I wouldn't recommend it. If you think you've got it - hang on in there, it's a bumpy ride. The most dangerous part is dehydration, so drink lots of fluids, despite the fact they crawl to get out of you.

In yet another Monty Python reference - 'It got better'. I'm fine now.

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