Last Friday I had to call off work unexpectedly because I was sick. And when I say I was sick, it wasn’t like the usual can’t-be-bothered-to-get-up kind of sick. This was the puking sick.
But also, it wasn’t that kind of sick. First off, I don’t get sick. Well, there was that one time I tried doing CrossFit and puked, but that was a totally different experience and reason. Even when I had the flu, which is a really rare occurrence in itself (because I don’t get sick), I didn’t throw up. Second, there was no reason for me to get sick like that. I hadn’t eaten anything out of the ordinary, in fact, I didn’t even really eat anything for dinner at all. I had no warning signs, it just came up on me quickly. I woke up with massive stomach pains.
Obviously, I’m not telling the whole story, because there is a probable reason why I got sick, but I didn’t put the two together until later that day and had to get some confirmation from a friend and later, online.
Normally, when I go to bed, I leave a small kitchen light on. It’s a single bulb light and I’ve discussed the special wiring in the Casa blog when I was changing it to LED. Normally, as I say, that light is on. But you can read in many places that in order to get the best quality sleep, you should sleep in complete darkness. Since my sleeping has been variable for quite some time, I decided Thursday night to leave that kitchen light off, which does leave my house dark.
Despite the small change to my sleeping ritual that night, everything else was kept the same. My additional sleeping aids of the sound machine and 1mg of melatonin were applied and effective. And, right on schedule, I woke up at around 3am to go to the bathroom. Nothing out of the ordinary.
But was out of the ordinary was the extra darkness. I’m not sure if it’s like this for everyone, but when it’s really dark, and sometimes with my eyes closed, I feel like I can still "see" the room. It’s like an infrared vision or like an x-ray. Maybe it’s just a memory, because I have never considered trying this special sight in an unfamiliar room. But anyway, I made my way to the bathroom using my night vision, still half asleep.
And my vision failed me terribly. I misjudged how far into the room I was and turned straight into a door frame, cracking my forehead on the corner of the molding. After a brief pause and some self-deprecating comments, I continued in the correct direction and rested my skull in my hands while on the toilet. The return trip to the bed was less eventful and I fell asleep again quickly.
About two hours later I woke up with the major stomach pains and wandered back to the bathroom, where I chewed up some Tums to settle my stomach. I had made it to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water when I got the unmistakable, undeniable, certain feeling that there was going to be some puking soon. And I was correct. However, there was nothing in my stomach. Well, some Tums, but nothing else.
I went back to bed and reasoned that if I was sick enough to puke, and I don’t puke, I should call off work. Oddly, my manager didn’t answer the phone, and his manager didn’t either, so I had to go to the third in command to submit my request. And afterwards, I fell asleep for another 5 hours.
The rest of the day I sort of wandered around in a daze. Food helped and didn’t make me any sicker. I didn’t really feel weak. I had no more nausea. But later that afternoon, I had a memory somewhere about concussions causing nausea and vomiting. Well, that makes my head injury seem a lot more important now. After confirming with my friendly paramedic, and later reading about concussions online, yeah, that’s probably what it was. If I was being extra attentive and sensitive, I could note that I had brief flashes of headaches come and go.
As it turns out, I guess I did take the best course of action and rested for the weekend. Everything was pretty normal by Saturday, and I got some extra napping in, too. Am I going to be any dumber for the incident? I don’t know how I would know. Wait, is that a sign?
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