Ouch.

I’ve had a week off to write an exam that’s due on Monday December 4. I’m maybe halfway done, if you look at it with mild and understanding eyes. Since, oh, Saturday night I’ve been fighting with a stomach flu that has more or less just kicked my ass.

I mean, I don’t think there are any diseases that are nice to have, but the stomach flu, for me, is just so undignified. First I thought it would just be a regular flu, because I was cold and shaky and had a fever and felt unhappy, with achy joints. You know, regular flu stuff. But then I started getting these alarming bulletins from my intestine. Pretty soon the intestinal area had assumed total dictatorship over my life and I was reduced to a quivering, massively dehydrated wreck, lying in my bed and wishing that I had an IV.

On Tuesday I called my doctor and she suggested, based on the information that I was going to the bathroom, oh, 20-25 times per twenty-four hour period, that I try some of that Imodium stuff. So I did. Major mistake. I felt like someone had just tied a twisty around my gut, so that everything just backed up and my entire belly felt like a drum. It’s like trying to put your car into reverse on the freeway. Then I started getting nauseated, and pretty soon I was perched on the edge of the bed, embracing our floor-washing bucket and dry-heaving. (I consider throwing up in the toilet to be even more undignified and humiliated than just throwing up, which is high on my list regardless.)  When things resumed their natural and proper direction around 2 in the morning (which in this case was, of course, still diarrhea) it came as a relief.

Anyway, now I’m up and tottering around again, easily dizzy and confused, but I’ve actually managed to eat some pizza and go outside twice. Yea!

The irony is that the assignment that I’ve managed to write half of so far is on constipation.