drwex | About last week (health)

tl;dr: Tuesday evening I came down with what I think was a case of food poisoning. I'm OK, mostly recovered now. This hit me way harder than I'd've expected.

I had a fantastic time on Monday. Tuesday afternoon I felt a little off, but given my digestive issues and the level of stress and anger I have at work I didn't think much of it. Tuesday evening things were definitely Not Right.

I've had food poisoning before, and I've had noroviruses before. This one felt much more like the former. I never had a fever, and the symptoms progressed slowly over a couple days down through the digestive tract. I've since read accounts of other people who had intestinal things but if it was a virus I can't figure out what the vector was.

I was on crowded public transport the Thursday before, but even if I was exposed that late, it'd be a 5-day incubation period. Usually these things are 48-72 hours. Nobody I had close contact with has shown any symptoms. If one of them was an asymptomatic vector it's possible they passed it on to me and didn't themselves have symptoms, but that's also unlikely.

What's odd, though, is I can't think of what I might've eaten that gave me such what-for. In all other cases I can think of, the source was pretty clearly identifiable, at least in retrospect. This time? No idea. Also, food issues usually pass in 24-48 hours.

I was out of work for all of Wednesday and Thursday and only managed a couple of hours on Friday. I was sleeping 8 hours at night (rare for me; usually a sign I'm sick) and still tired during the days, napping when I could. Some of the symptoms were definitely made worse by concurrent acid reflux problems and an allergy attack.

The loss of body temperature control and resultant cramping and teeth-chattering shakes weren't a lot of fun, either. Pygment was a trooper through all of it; Shaz came up and took me to dinner on Wednesday. AHF was fortunately on tap to drive Pygment on Friday since I would've probably caused some kind of accident had I tried. I'm mostly back to better now, a week later, but it was not fun.