Yesterday, I became the definition of pure suckage.

Things were going well, really well — I'd been up much of the day, my head and neck weren't hurting much.

Then, right after dinnertime, wham.

[No, I don't mean WHAM! — things were bad enough without George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley showing up on my doorstep.]

I began to feel a bit dizzy, so I headed back to my bed. In the time it took me to cover that 20 foot distance, I was barely able to stand at all. The room was spinning around me, and I fell onto the bed and lay there motionless, begging God to make the whole house stop spinning.

I have had an ear infection-based case of vertigo in the past, and this felt exactly like that... except I didn't have the pressure in the ear I associate with an inner ear infection. I did, however, have a fever and the sweats.

It was misery. I couldn't sleep, and for about five hours, I couldn't move a muscle without setting the entire state to spinning around me. Mom came in before going to bed herself, and did me the courtesy of locating a trash can next to the bed... just in case, if you take my meaning.

Around about 2am, what I was afraid would happen, happened: I had to get up to use the restroom. It was a rather short stumble from point A to point B, but I managed to come close to falling on my face about four times. By the time I made it back to my bed, the entire country was spinning around me.

I had to remain sitting up for a few minutes. My stomach had begun to rebel, and it was a very near run thing, I can tell you. I was certain I would not have been able to make it back to the bathroom in time.

Finally — perhaps an hour (spent mostly in Hell) later, I was able to lay down again with a reasonable certainty I wouldn't be making any untoward messes on my bedroom floor. North America continued to whirl around my brain.

I was as miserable as I think I've ever been... and I've had gout, as you may recall. My head hurt; my stomach, while not exactly rebelling, was not happy either; I was running a fever; I was sweating like a Kennedy under oath. The Western Hemisphere rotated inside my skull.

Finally, sometime I think around 4am, my fever broke, and I was able to sleep.

So ya, I had a pretty crappy day. And if I ever act like the world revolves around me, well, maybe I earned it for just a little while.

Posted by Russ at 09:06 PM, December 15, 2007 in Health