“Gastro.” It’s a bit of a joke – right? Oh all those people with the runs! Ehehehe…
Unless it’s you. And in this case, it is. Well, me, at any rate. On one of the worst weeks for it to happen, for us. Wife had two surgeries booked for the week, (which we got her to both, no problems – sort of) and it’s been some of the hottest few days this year. And our airconditioner stopped playing fair. Wife has SLE/APS and heat is a killer for people with lupus and antiphospholipid.
Dec 4th.
I did the week’s shopping (as always, masked) and went home. Almost no-one else masks so it’s not much of a protection but I can’t manage with properly fitted N95 for more than five – ten minutes before I start getting dizzy. Emphysema/COPD.
Tue 5th.
Nothing much. I tried to go and sort out the workshop but when a 26C day turned into a 32C climate inside the shed I gave it a miss and had a rest day.
Wed 6th.
Drove about 80 minutes to the hospital where wife was to have her biopsy, home by 4:30pm and by 6pm I was having chills and body aches and cramps and the runs. A few days is about the normal development for gastro, so I kind of knew where it came from. By 8pm it was so severe that we tested for COVID, but luckily negative. Body aches seemed to concentrate in “lumps” of pain everywhere. I shudder to guess what my temperature was, we neglected to take it.
I did soak through thermal underwear (I was also shivering like a cat passing machetes at this stage) and tracksuit pants and a hoodie, in between almost passing out from the temperature I would have been running.
7th.
Woke up in a soaked bed on my side, had another shower, too nauseous to eat anything but drank all I could to make up for dehydration. Still, my weight went down almost 2.5kg overnight. The fever wasn’t anything as fierce, the muscle cramps on the various “lumps” were reducing, and I could hold a thought again.
Wife was going through our local pages and found someone asking if anyone had gotten food poisoning from a certain cafe in town, people assured here they hadn’t, but that there was some nasty gastric bug going around. The complaining woman was probably just trying to find answers but that she suspected a Vietnames banh mi place shows that we still have some way to go before we’re truly multicultural.
8th.
Woke up feeling much better, had another morning shower, and took wife to her second surgical appointment, but I was kind of on the end of my tether here. I have to explain something here, I have insomnia issues and so I stay awake days no matter what – in the last decade I may have had daytime sleeps maybe half a dozen times, generally just a few hours at a time. But today, I got home, showered again, and went to bed for four hours straight.
Woke up with intermittent and painful stomach cramps, but also no longer nauseous so I thought we should get a bit of chicken. I was wrong… It caused further cramps, more nausea despite stemetil, and by this point I’d been sh*tting through the eye of a needle almost three days.
9th.
Well, that’s a mystery. It’s still Friday and I don’t even know why I’m writing this. One thing is sure – I don’t have the spoons to write blog articles, especially what with also needing to set up the workshop before it gets too hot, so quantity may go down when the 3-4weeks worth of scheduled posts dries up.
I’ll keep you all posted.