Friends and colleagues have noticed that I’ve not been online at all this entire week, and I thought I’d share the story behind that in a post.

Last Sunday afternoon I was sitting in the cinema about to watch The Lovely Bones, and all was well. About half an hour into the movie, though, I began to feel cold. Since Sal wasn’t cold, we figured I must’ve been sitting in line with the air conditioner. The theatre was busy enough that we couldn’t really change seats, so I put up with it. As the movie went on, I got colder and colder, and by its end I was physically shivering, teeth chattering, lungs sore from breathing in cold air. It was literally the coldest I had ever felt.

Well, it turns out that it had nothing to do with the cinema. When I got home I was no better. I didn’t stop feeling cold until an hour or two later when the fever kicked in.

Sunday night was sleepless as I wrestled with spikes in body temperature and general pain throughout my body, and of course I resolved not to go to work on Monday, figuring that this was some sort of 24-hour bug and that I’d be good by the next day.

Monday brought new surprises, and I’m sure you’ll forgive me for not going into any more detail than the following two words: Explosive Diarrhea.

Monday night saw me bouncing between the bed and the toilet every 40 minutes or so, so it looked like it was going to be two days off, and a visit to the doctor. The doctor immediately diagnosed it as an infection of campylobacter, which is a common cause of food poisoning. The third case he’d seen that week. He said it takes about five days to pass, and suggested two things in the meantime:

  1. Codeine
  2. Sports drinks

Weird, huh? The codeine was for the stomach cramps (which, by this stage, were brutal) and (his words) to “bundle me up” a bit inside. The sports drinks were for rehydration and electrolyte replenishment.

We got straight into the codeine, which worked pretty well, but unfortunately it was not until late Wednesday that I remembered about the sports drinks. I’d been trying, until then, to sip at glasses of water, but by Wednesday arvo I was dangerously dehydrated. I could barely move, and my skin (particularly my lips) was dry and flaky. They say you can last three days without water. I’d been drinking, but not nearly enough. Let me say that when Sal brought home a bottle of Gatorade, it was a revelation. It was like I’d been waiting for that drink since Sunday night.

By Thursday I was starting to come round. I hit the pain killers every four hours, and kept up with the sports drinks.

The doctor had given me a medical certificate through ‘til Thursday, but luckily my boss has given me the ok to work from home on Friday. I’m definitely still in no shape to drive for an hour to get to work, much less sit at a desk for a day.

The big news came last night on the local news on TV: It turns out that It’s not just food poisoning, it’s a salmonella outbreak that has struck the border region! So I’ve just gone through a week with salmonellosis. I can tell you that I lost about 7 kg in three days, and it’s without a doubt the sickest I’ve been since I contracted chicken pox back when I was 21.

The moral of the story: don’t get salmonella poisoning. Apparently local authorities have traced the source back to a retail outlet in town that we ate at on Saturday (Sal was lucky not to pick it up herself). My brother-in-law ended up in hospital on a drip, and I’m sure I could’ve been next to him if we’d gone there rather than to the doctor. What a week!