Ring of Fire

The post I alluded to yesterday. This post is not for the faint of spirit. And yet it is all. Too. True.

I've been out of sorts for the past few days. I don't know the source of my problems, though I do have a sense of where it all began. On Sunday night, I swear I had a fever or something. I had the chills something awful. You know those sparks of bitter icy cold which seem to start from nowhere and just overtake your body with involuntary convulsions? Yeah, that was me on Sunday night. I climbed under the covers, but then it got too hot. So I'd climb out from under the covers, which is when, like a German blitzkrieg maneuver, the chill would attack anew. Under cover, sweat; above blanket, chill. There was no middle ground to this. (Of course, I was still too lazy to actually get up out of bed to get my thermometer to figure out whether I actually did, in fact, have a fever.)

I popped some acetominophen, hoping that would help. The "fever" never actually broke, but by the next day, I was feeling better. By "better," all I mean is that I no longer experienced the chills.

By 8:00 on Monday night, I would have given my left arm to get the chills again.

Because they would have been infinitely preferable to what I actually did experience,

Which was severe gastrointestinal distress:

Yes, folks, I was suffering from explosive diarrhea.

I don't think I've ever experienced a case of diarrhea as bad as this was. It started with a huge series of farts, but quickly escalated beyond that. Farts standing alone seem innocuous enough, but woah Nelly! Eventually my body ambushed me with a shart (terribly embarrassing to begin with, even though thankfully I was alone at the time), and before I knew it I commenced the first of what would become a ridiculously large number of trips to the bathroom.

I was riding the Hershey Highway all night long. (This is not an exaggeration. I mean the sun was on its way up and I was still in distress.) It took no effort whatsoever to get things started; I went though my entire evening in a perpetual state of butt-clench to prevent any accidental leakage. There were times on the throne when I swear the level of discharge exceeded what my shower produces, even though I wasn't pushing. This is the kind of stuff olestra is supposed to cause, but dammit, I haven't had fat free Doritos in ages.

Sleep evaded my every attempt at capture, mostly because it's impossible to keep your butt clenched as you drift off to sleep. You know things are going in the wrong direction when, after trying to get to sleep for four hours, you’ve already changed your sheets once and taken three showers, each time starting with your underwear on. Seriously, changing my sheets at 3:30 in the morning is not what I wanted to be doing on a Monday night. Having to strategically plan for how to lay out the new sheets so that any new leakage would cause minimal problem was simply bizarre. (Eventually I decided not to use the flat sheet as I normally would, instead folding it to create a thicker layer beneath my ass.)

The second sign things aren't going well for the evening: When you drift off to sleep, (involuntarily) unclench your cheeks, then actually lie there and debate with yourself the comparative merits of lying there in your own excrement just to get some frigging SLEEP versus getting up to clean yourself off YET AGAIN. (I eventually chose the latter, which resulted in my getting a grand total of about 2 hours of sleep all night long.)

I bought some Immodium; I hope it works. If it doesn't, I may decide to take a day off from work in the event that this is more than just some bizarre stomach poisoning that doesn't just pass (no pun intended) with some over-the-counter medicine. The dosage instructions are weird; it says to take two tablets when you have your first attack, followed by another one after the next attack, but not to exceed 4 pills in 24 hours. So really, there's no timed system for taking the pills, you take one after each trip to the bathroom. What if you're shitting every 10 minutes or something? Hm.

** POSTSCRIPT: Although I only took 2 Immodium pills, I seem to be feeling better today. Either they worked or whatever I ate finally passed out of my system. Of course, my feeling better may also be attributed to the fact that I actually slept decently last night (with the flat sheet folded up under me, just in case). I don't ever want to experience that again. Tonight, I'm cleaning out my refrigerator.