Something is Rotten

I was glad when I got sick over winter break because I couldn't imagine how I would cope with an illness during the madness of work in January.

You would think that as someone who enjoys Shakespeare as much as I do, I would know better than to tempt the fates like that.

I wasn't feeling quite right at school yesterday.  Not entirely unusual - sometimes getting up early just makes me nauseous.

However, some rumblings down below made for a tense 1st and 2nd period.  In fact, I had to scrap my originally-planned activity for the latter half of 2nd period in favor of something that would allow me to stay seated.  Once the class ended and my planning period began, I started making far too many dashes to the faculty restroom that is happily close to my classroom.  I figured I could make it through the day.  I only had two more classes to go and musical rehearsal.  Doable, right?

And then I started vomiting.

I briefly considered sticking it out.  Vomiting makes you feel better, right?

And then I vomited again.  So I threw in the metaphorical towel, called down to the main office (not daring to venture that far from the restroom), and typed up some rapid sub plans for 4th period.

There are exactly four stoplights on my 33 mile drive from school to home.  Three of them were red.  I almost made it, and I like to believe I would have if the fourth light hadn't turned red on me at the last moment.  Fortunately, I was able to open my car door and lean out in time.

My cat was baffled at seeing me during the daylight hours, and even more confused when I ignored her greetings to dash for the bathroom, then shoved her out of her very comfortable spot on my pillow.  I spent the rest of the afternoon dozing, making regular dashes to the bathroom to vomit again, and trying my darndest to get warm.  According to my parents (yay, long distance diagnostics!), that last part is what makes stomach flu the likely cause instead of my first suspicion of food poisoning.  Given my shivering state under three layers of clothes and five layers of blankets, including one electric cranked up to high, they may be right.

They tried to talk me into calling in sick last night.  I protested - I had no plans I could give a sub (the curse of teaching non-textbook-based classes), I had too much to do, so many deadlines, I need to go to school, etc.  Plus, I hadn't thrown up in almost two hours.  Surely I would be better in the morning.

Not so much.  I did consider going in despite an unpleasant wakeup with my alarm, but the thought of exposing my cast and colleagues to this bug led me to haul my laptop back into bed to piece together whatever pitiful plans I could five days into the term.  I emailed them off, wrote a couple of notices to try to deal with musical rehearsal and speech practice; and then crawled back into bed for another four hours of sleep.

Happily, I do seem to be on the mend.  After a trip to the grocery store that convinced me that not attempting the far longer drive to work was the right choice, this afternoon I successfully ate one Jello-O cup, half a cup of applesauce, and a piece of toast.  Whoo!