My last week has been, by every measurement, terrible.
It all started last Thursday when I went over to my brother's house to hang out with my parents and my nieces and nephews. Which started out pretty normal. Arguing over ordering Chinese food, watching movies full of adorably annoying characters that happen to speak the same language as my nephew (primarily consisting of fruit names, colors, and Bob), and keeping the baby out of the dog's food and water, this despite the fact that the only time he wasn't completely put out was when he was happily munching and splashing away.
Shortly after we had sat down to a nice plate of lo mein and bbq pork my mom got a call to pick up the kids from piano lessons because they were sick. Long story short, less than an hour later found me wiping vomit off the bathroom wall and floor. I'd like to say I'm long suffering and unfailingly kind, but anyone who reads this most likely know me so they'd see through the BS. I did it because my mom just had surgery and my dad has bad knees and I didn't know how long until my brother would get home and the only thing worse than wiping someone else's cookies off the wall is having to scrub off dried-on hurl.
Friday was uneventful. I worked from home (from my parent's home actually since I was visiting), went shoe shopping with my mom, and then ordered pizza and root beer and ate that while watching The Decoy Bride with my grandma. Which seems unimportant but is key to the following paragraphs.
Saturday morning started off normally. I was up early, ate pizza for breakfast, and headed over to the church building to help clean with my parents. Yeah, that's right. I'm never around to clean the building I go to, but I helped clean theirs. There could be a problem here but with my impending move I've lost the ability to care. During all this I felt . . . off. Shortly thereafter I was lying on the couch reliving all the times I've ever thrown up in an effort to stave off the inevitable. Some part of me, a virus addled part, thought that maybe I could talk myself out of it. There was a lot of material to work through. With a stomach issue through high school and college that's a lot of chunks to analyze. Many, many episodes of the worst show ever written. With some particularly memorable times. Like the time I realized my shirt was on inside out when I was throwing up before early morning seminary. Or that one time on the bus. Or experiences that aren't even my own but are so hysterically terrible that I hear it vividly in the original tellers voice, "and then I lost control of my bowels". This is probably the real reason I cleaned up the children's barf. Throwing up is awful and you already feel like absolute poop without having to feel guilty that someone else had to clean up your sick. It's really no big deal. Except throwing up is awful and I didn't want to do it. Besides that, all I had eaten was pizza and I like pizza and I want to continued liking pizza because pizza is bae.
Hoping that my sick body's inability to control my internal temperature might allow me to trade hurling for hypothermia, I attempted to delay the ultimate outcome by resting on the cold bathroom floor. I eventually succumbed to the inevitable. That is, after carefully wiping down the porcelain idol I was doomed to worship. I've learned over the years that it really does matter what you are throwing up because somethings are just worse than others. Pizza is not good. Well, nothing is good to throw up because it's freaking vomiting and it sucks majorly, but some things are definitely worse than others. Also, pizza with extra sauce is initially terrifying because you start to wonder if there is something much more seriously wrong with you and you are gagging and shaking already and now you are also worried that you might be bleeding internally.
Not long after I started losing my lunch, my mom started feeling sick as well. She ended up as bad off as I was and we commiserated in our illness as my dad waited on us. This continued off and on all afternoon. I managed to eat something and went to bed. Sunday basically consisted of sleeping and reading and watching TV. But that's boring. On with the show!
Monday I called out of work because no. Just no. I still felt queasy, and I had a blood draw later that afternoon. So again, mostly just resting and doing nothing and me following my mom around like a lonely little puppy. Adding to the suckiness of the weekend, I went to the doctor and was officially diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Because my body apparently hates me. Or at least it hates my thyroid gland and that basically adds up to the same thing because it spends it's time attacking my thyroid and making me feel like crap. While I'm glad to know what is actually going on, and it seems like I have a doctor that knows what he's doing, I'd much rather not have an autoimmune disorder. Especially since much of what you do to manage Hashi's is diet based and I really like food. Gluten tends to be a major issue for Hashi's sufferers and what did I just say about pizza?
I finally convinced myself to go home and the next morning, Tuesday, I got up and went to work, although someone sluggishly because I still felt woozy and was so tired it was nearly impossible to keep my eyes open. Three hours into work I had to duck out for the rest of the day because it was constant gaggy blechness and an overpowering desire to crawl under my desk and sleep. I got home and puttered about because moving around made my stomach feel somewhat better.
Here's the thing you have to understand. I live in the basement of my brother's house. It's like living in a cave. I don't know what the weather is like until I'm leaving the house. A need for something that resides upstairs is weighed carefully against having to go up and down the steep, narrow, wooden stairs. The thermostat is connected to my brother's phone so when he's gone it goes into "away" mode and stops heating or cooling.
On this particular occasion I finally settled down to rest and was so dang cold. So I lumbered up the stairs to tell the thermostat that the house wasn't empty. On the way back down, tragedy struck. About a third of the way down the stairs my feet slipped forward and with my right hand clutching the rail I bounced down the stairs hard on my left elbow and butt cheek. At the bottom of the stairs I bounced up, yelled "F@#$!" very loudly and ran into my room, flung myself on my bed and screamed/sobbed out a litany of grievances that life had recently left on my doorstep intermingled with graphic curses. Horrible, wracking sobs. It was all very unattractive. Luckily however, I had managed to escape with only minor damage and renewed hatred of this particular staircase.
I came home from work today (Wednesday) and decided to take a bath and it was at this point that I saw the actual damage done by the treads yesterday as I bounced/slid ungracefully down the wicked, conniving steps. My elbow was rug-burned from my sweater and bruised. And on my left butt-cheek is a massive, dark purple bruise. It's the size of my fist! And it hurts.
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| It's this color. I was going to include a picture but even though it's a zoomed in picture of only skin I felt weird putting a picture of any part of my butt on a blog post. |
PS: Also today, rather unexpectedly, I received a visit from Jolly Ol' Saint Nicholas of the Underworld dressed in red and bringing presents to the good children, namely not babies. Jerk.
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