Sunday 20 January 2008

Pic of the day: On-topic picture from educational anime Moyashimon - Tales of Agriculture.

Sick night

I was sick tonight. It felt pretty bad at the time. But obviously I survived this time, since I write this two months later. I really should stop doing that, but at least it comes in handy in such situations as these. It must be somewhat comforting for the reader. Right then, I could have needed that comfort myself, though.

Around 2 in the night I was shivering. I was queasy and generally felt sick all over. Something was wrong, but I could not say exactly what, except it probably had to do with my digestion. I was too sleepy to think clearly, but too sick to sleep.

Sometime during the night I managed to sleep for fifteen minutes, and this helped surprisingly with the "too sleepy" part. Unfortunately, the rest got worse. By 7 in the morning, my stomach felt like it was full of glowing hot sand, I was desperate to throw up but couldn't. I had even called the medical hotline but they told me to take more antacids and wait. At the time, I could not even swallow antacids, or water for that matter.

And yet I survived. I will probably never know what it was. I tend to be very careful about what I eat. I avoid foods that tend to pick up food poisoning bacteria, and I cook or fry almost everything perishable except the yogurt. Even so, I got sick, and will have to just nibble easily digestable things and drink soup for the next couple days.

***

One thing that strikes me, perhaps because of my journal, is that I usually get sick on weekends. More exactly the nights between Friday and Saturday or between Saturday and Sunday. Weird, huh? And here in Norway, these are the nights when people drink like crazy. Sure, there is the upper middle class that just enjoys a glass of wine with their food. But the worker class, and not just manual workers either, tend to drink their whole quota for the week in these two nights. Many literally drink till they get sick. In fact, their sickness is almost certainly similar to mine. I drink very little, very rarely (too rarely for my health if current science is to be believed) and specifically not on weekends, because I won't risk going to the emergency room and smell of alcohol. Nobody will think it is anything else then. They probably don't think it even now.

So is this some kind of psychic resonance or empathic reaction? Or is it just because I sleep longer on Saturday mornings and stay up later on Friday and Saturday nights? Unusual mealtimes? I really fail to see how any of these could set off a reaction a dramatic as this, though.

Again, I shall almost certainly never know. This life is a strange place. But overall I like it here.