Last night was a fever dream
I woke up about 3 hours ago at 5PM as of this writing. Not from a power nap. From 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
You see, yesterday morning as I began my day, I started to feel a little off. Not particularly horrible, but just not quite right. After getting up early and knocking out some work, I prepared to take my morning walk. But every time I got up to go, I began to feel woozy.
It wasn’t long before I found myself back in bed trying to shake off some unexplained nausea.
Not long after that, I found myself clutching my pillow for dear life and breaking out in a cold sweat that was much different than my usual hot, out of shape sweat.
And it wasn’t long after that, that I stumbled my way to the bathroom and threw up the contents of my stomach. And in a rare turn of events, this was a puke that had nothing to do with alcohol consumption.
However, because I had not eaten anything since 7PM the previous night, there wasn’t much to throw up besides bile and the various crumbs that lodge their way into my windpipe for months on end. The result being a very violent, dry heaving puke. It was what I describe as a panic puke. The entire time I was gasping for air and vaguely hoping for death while my ill-used ab muscles contorted and spasmed.
It was the kind of puke that I very inappropriately compare to a scene of a wounded soldier lying in the field in a war movie, death all but inevitable. His life is fading, his mind is going, and all he wants in that moment is his mom there to comfort him. Not kidding whatsoever, while I was giving my esophagus a workout, I had a profound longing to have my mom there to pat me on the head, hold back the quarter inch of hair I have on the side of my douche new-age Euro haircut, and tell me I’d be alright.
It was in this moment of narcissistic melodrama that it finally became obvious to me: I was sick.
Nobody likes getting sick, but least of all me. Yes, I spend a good majority of my time lying around doing nothing when healthy. But I like the option to get up and do something the few times a week I’m so compelled.
I also despise having stomach illnesses. Food is a big part of my enjoyment of life and being resigned to not eating or eating an exclusively bland diet is a cruel punishment for me. So as I lay wounded in bed, my stomach twisted into knots, my temperature running above 100 degrees, I had to wonder, “Why do bad things happen to mediocre people?”
Perhaps it was a divine reminder to not take good health for granted. Perhaps it was a warning to maintain a good diet and cut back on the booze. Or, most likely, it was a direct response to me making a mayo-based salad dressing with off-brand mayo that was nearing expiration.
Regardless of the reason, I felt like absolute hell and knew I was in store for a shitty (pun intended) few days.
A quick aside before I go any further. Why the fuck does everyone’s stomach go to shit as they get older? I know why my stomach hurts. Not exactly a secret that crushing Chinese seafood 40 minutes after it was cooked and delivered in the back of a chainsmoker’s Hyundai Sonata is going to wreak havoc on your insides. But my non-psychopath friends have talked about getting pretty significant stomach issues despite eating objectively better, higher quality food that when we were in school. Even my female friends who weigh like a buck 10 and eat so little that they’re intermittent fasting purely by accident talk about stomach troubles. Wtf is going on?
I digress. So I’m lying in bed and have mixed emotions. On the one hand, I’m looking at 2 days minimum where I’ll be eating less than 1,000 calories. In other words, I’m about to SHED weight. So there’s a silver lining here because 40 hours into this thing and I look GOOD. On the other hand, I’m about to have really weird fever dreams, so that blows.
See, I don’t get sick very often. But when I do, I get really sick. I’m talking fever, nausea, diarrhea, puking (aka mouth diarrhea), sweating, the chills, etc. And though I usually try to sleep it off and let my white blood cells gang tackle this bitch ass virus, it’s tough because my fever dreams are usually so scary and incoherent that I can’t stay asleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. For example, this is my view when lying on my left side:
That’s my peacoat hanging up with a yoga mat underneath it. Yes, I do yoga sometimes. Try having my body and see if you don’t need to stretch. Anyways, when I’m healthy and lucid, that looks like a peacoat and yoga mat. When my brain is on fire and my body is dying, that looks exactly like a dementor-esque demon coming to claim my soul before discovering that I sold it long ago to win a low-stakes bet on Horizon League basketball.
So I spend the next 4-5 hours mumbling in my sleep about that scary dude in my corner. That’s followed up by a dream where I’m at a McDick’s in Florida somewhere and I decide I’m now well enough to eat fast food. So I end up spending $700 on two sandwich meals, a figure which I realized was too high when I saw they charged me separately for the fries even though they’re included in the meals. Wow, great sleuthing dream George. Maybe the fact that McDonald’s cost you $700 could have been your first clue. Also, I think when I went to order I was going to get a double quarter pounder, but decided on a single because it’s healthier? Bottom line, I almost puked in my sleep from eating an imaginary quarter pounder.
Finally we come to this morning. I wake up at 8, a feat I’m unable to accomplish when healthy, and feel slightly better thanks to a lovely friend who came by with some supplies for me the previous night. At least I think she did. Could’ve been a soup fairy for all I know. This lasts for 30 minutes before I realize it’s time to sleep again. Then the great slumber begins.
Over the next 8 hours, I have a bizarre dream that I’m fairly certain could be the plot to yet another awful M Night Shyamalan movie.
Basically I’m on vacation on an island with a bunch of my closest friends. Except the rock formations on this island are all changing position radically every few minutes. For some reason, no one seems to be concerned about this except for me. Quickly, dream George realizes this is a shitty horror movie and tries to warn everyone exactly how it’s going to play out to no avail. They all get mad at me for cramping the vacation. Whatever, have fun trapped on hell island assholes. The rest of it was some mix of Shyamalan’s terrible movie Old with elements of The Green Mile and some Hellraiser demons mixed in. Also I think Nazi ghosts were the bad guys running the show or something, idk it lost the plot pretty quickly.
This brings us to 5PM. I awake absolutely drenched in sweat despite only having a single blanket on my bed and a fan blasting cold air at me from a foot away. This is due to three distinct possibilities:
My fever broke during my extended slumber and I sweated out all the virus (no clue how medicine works)
The Shamalayan dream was causing my heart rate to rise
Had to rip a piss so my body was expelling liquid from other sources
Regardless, I awoke and took my temp. It was down to 98.8 and has been dropping steadily every time I’ve checked it. Suspiciously so actually. What if it just keeps going down…
Anyways, it seems I’m well on the way to recovery. So what’s next for George? Well, it’s my pal’s bday this weekend and he’s having a big dinner at a Brazilian Steakhouse on Friday so that should go well. I even expressed my excitement to get back on the eating and drinking horse to my highly supportive roommate.
It’s possible I bear some responsibility for my own health. Welp, time to make that McDick’s dream a reality!
