sick – joedag32

For Dustin’s bachelor party we were going fishing on a boat. While I have gotten slight motion sickness on a boat before, it was never anything too serious. So I was hoping that going further out into the ocean to fish wouldn’t be so bad.

About 15-20 minute into the voyage I knew I was in trouble. Not only was a random kid on the boat just completely out of the blue staring and hugging me, but I knew I was going to be sick. Oh, and we had about 6 more hours to go.

I got so sick that all I could do was find a place to sit away from people and just weather the storm. I managed not to throw up into 2 hours in, but once I had to made sure to wrap my arms around a rail in case we hit a big wave and not fall overboard while vomiting off the side.

I’m not going to lie, it was a pretty horrible day. Knowing that you have absolutely nowhere to go to get away from the nausea, and even a best case scenario the ride back to shore would take an hour and a half if they called it a day early. Yuck, no fun at all.

I currently hate boats, fish, the ocean, fishing rods, bait, water, wind, waves, and all the people on the boat (even though it wasn’t their fault at all and they were a big help).

Last weekend I was soundly defeated by the influenza virus. It locked me to my bed for at least 3 days (literally didn’t leave my bed for a 30 hour stretch at one point), and knocked me out for longer than that.

I’m not sure exactly where I’d gotten it, but have narrowed it down to the gym or a wedding I attended on New Year’s Eve. I don’t recall being around anyone with the flu or flu-like symptoms, but given the time I had become ill and the amount of people at each, that’s what makes the most sense to me.

I began feeling ill on Friday. Initially thought I was coming down with a cold, as the early symptoms are similar. Saturday morning I had the body aches. It was a bit funny, I found myself grunting with each and every little movement I would make.

It quickly apparent that I was in store for some type of major illness by morning, and decided to make one last drugstore visit should it continue to escalate (which it certainly did).

I got myself some supplies, notably a thermometer to verify if I had a fever. Turns out I did in fact have a fever. So I assembled all my essentials by my bed, and fell in for what would be an extended stay.

I don’t really recall much of Saturday or Sunday. I was in bed tossing and turning, sweating and freezing, and just riding out the flu and my fever. At some point later in the day on Sunday I realized that well over 24 hours had passed and I had not left my bed and supplies were dwindling.

So I caved and called my Mom in for reinforcements. Good old Mom came through, and it was important to have someone know of my condition at this point as I was in pretty bad shape.

On Monday I had to use my first ever sick day from work. My 15 year streak of never having used a sick day came to a halt. Oh well, it was an impressive streak. I was still running a fever and was much too contagious to be around others even if I thought I could will myself through the day.

Wow, it’s amazing just how much the flu can knock you around. It’s about a week later and while I no longer feel ill, I’m still pretty exhausted and it looks like that’s not going away for at least a few more days.

I’m not a fan of influenza.