: not a blog

01 jan 07

penis
new years
me == drunk

and then in the midst of this revelry you take the time to make a submission.

sorry i haven't posted any answers in a while, but i can make an excuse for the past two days: i have been deathly ill -- violently ill. it started off with nausea and a bit of diarrhea. then, i threw up, for the first time in probably ten years; good to know i can still do it. so i felt better for about 5 minutes, then the nausea crept back until it reached a critical level about a half hour later, and i'd throw up again.

altogether i threw up eight times, i believe. possibly nine. towards the end, of course, there was nothing left to throw up, so i started regurgitating brown bile. fortunately, i had been drinking water in between pukings, so that provided some medium for the chunkies to float about in (there were maybe one or two chunkies left by the eighth vomiting), and prevented my stomach from cramping totally against itself. so, i got this watery puke, that came out through my nose.

if this ever happens to you, it's important to keep frantically drinking water throughout the whole ordeal. i think i peed once, barely, in 24 hours, i was so dehydrated. it's impossible to avoid getting dehydrated when you're essentially blasting water out of both ends of your digestive tract for several hours, but you do the best you can to abate this. this effect makes diarrhea a significant killer in the developing world.

it's amazing how much stomach contents there was -- up until the fifth or sixth vomiting, i regurgitated semi-digested food. the first three or four times, the amount was non-trivial; i was shocked that my stomach could hold so much. the day before i had gone all day without eating (laziness), and then when i drove out in the evening to run some errands i stopped at il porto and got a pizza, which i ate in the parking lot. my main mission was toilet paper and earphones, but whenever i take a trip out to do errands i feel i need to justify it with some stop at a restaurant.

along with the paper towels, i got some lemon sorbet, and ate that when i got home. so, i had a stomach that was pretty seriously full when i went to bed that night.

oh, and i had the rather awesome experience of shitting and puking at the same time -- sitting on the toilet spraying diarrhea into the bowl, while simultaneously stretching my torso out to lean over the sink to my right, and retching out chunks of digesting pizza cheese floating in acid brine. it would have made good performance art. i suppose it was, but where's a video camera when you need one?

so, i threw up roughly every half hour, from 4:30am to 9:30am. then, it stopped, but i was still too nauseous to go to sleep -- i'd drift off for a few minutes, but then the nausea would wake me up again. finally, it abated to the point where i could stay asleep, and i slept all afternoon. my stomach was still sensitive and weak, but the nausea had pretty much abated by the time i woke up. then, the fever started -- my temperature rapidly rose from "normal" to around 102 in the late evening, and then dropped off again.

so, i thought i was pretty much in the clear; no more nausea, and no more fever. i mean, i was still weak, and wouldn't have eaten anything more substantial than a saltine or two, but it felt as though i were on the downward slope. then i made the mistake of taking a particular medication on an empty stomach. and this was a really empty stomach. so, i was nauseous pretty much the whole night, and didn't get much sleep. even now, my stomach is still a bit sore and plaintive.

but the fever is gone for good (knock on wood), and this whole collection of symptoms should be reduced to vestiges by friday afternoon, which is when i leave for dayton to attend my aunt's ordination. she made a late-life decision (well...middle-aged decision, anyway) to attend seminary -- unitarian divinity school -- and become a unitarian minister. she's been serving as an "interim minister", serving a congregation while they are between permanent ministers, which is the final step on the way to ordination.

i'm bringing my laptop, and am going to hopefully fill the time by bloggi -- er, i mean...writing this stuff. this is not a blog, remember?