Welcome back

I guess it's been a few days, huh. I'll tell you why.

Illness.

Awful, awful illness.

On Wednesday I woke up with a severe headache and stomach pains. Luckily, I had some Tylenol on hand, so that took care of the headache for a while, but the stomach pains didn't go away. I couldn't even eat breakfast, it was so bad. I was alone at work that whole day because Shino-san was still in Osaka. My stomach pains only got worse, and as the day went on, some new symptoms arose: feverishness.

I underwent feelings of extreme heat and uncontrollable sweating, during which I would even take my shirt off (I figured as long as I'm the only one in the office, I may as well), and those periods would then be followed by the opposite. I would feel extremely cold, have to put my shirt back on and my whole body would shiver uncontrollably. This went on all day, and I decided to send an email to Shino-san and leave work early. Wednesday night was one of the worst nights I can remember having. At the beginning of the night I was having an episode of extreme heat and as I lay in bed, practically naked, I felt like I was swimming in a pool of my own sweat. I could barely sleep, and when I could it was only for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, at which point I would wake up either from shivering or from the need to go to the bathroom (diarrhea had reared its ugly head, plus I threw up). It may have just been dreams, but I think I even hallucinated a little... my mind was totally panicked. In the middle of the night I sent another email to Shino-san saying I'm really sorry but I just don't think I can come into work on Thursday. He wrote me back in the morning saying that's totally fine.

Horrible timing, by the way, for this to happen: I missed my own show at the Ruby Room on Wednesday, and then I missed Aya's show on Thursday. I was really looking forward to Aya's show, too, because I haven't seen her in like 2 or 3 weeks.

Anyways, Thursday (yesterday) was not much better. Still with the shivering, the sweating, the diarrhea and throwing up. By the time I went to bed last night, however, things started to feel a bit better. I hadn't had either a hot or cold spell in a few hours and my stomach didn't hurt terribly.

Today is even better. I'm still a little sensitive to temperature, but not nearly to the extreme that it was on Wednesday, and really the only problem I have left to deal with is the diarrhea, which is still just as bad as it was on Wednesday. Then again, I haven't eaten any solid foods whatsoever since Tuesday, so that could be part of it.

the point of the story is that I now know the Japanese word for diarrhea: geri.

I know this wasn't the most pleasant entry, but hey, you ask for my life, you get my life.

Love, Lawrence