Starting early Monday morning, my body entered into a total implosion. I haven't endured anything like that in about 17 years. I'm talking the barfing, the diarrhea and the fever. Gross, right? I generally don't get sick all that often, and seemingly less so since moving to Florida, but it's usually the generic fever/ache thing, sometimes with the respiratory crud. But this was many magnitudes of more awful.
My brain gets into these weird loops of things that aren't real when I have a fever. This time, it was some weirdness about how my blankets were... something related to the music I had playing. It's so not really a thing that I can't explain what it is. There was something else about certain colors not reacting to other objects of the same color, and between these two things, I couldn't sleep.
There are other slightly more logical, if not rational, things that come up. This time, I was fixated on an interview clip I saw from Kevin Smith recently, talking about how he didn't have any of the typical heart attack symptoms, but he threw up a bunch before they took him to the hospital. So my brain was in the mode of, "Crap, what if I'm having a heart attack (for six straight hours)?" And that was coupled with the fact that I'm not insured until next week, so that created even more anxiety.
Does everyone have this kind of thing with fevers? I'm sure that some of it is caused by dehydration, and boy did I lose a lot of water (down five pounds in 48 hours).
I think I've been relatively lucky in terms of health, and that may add to my anxiety over the idea that something more serious could come up. My weight, cholesterol and blood pressure have been a little higher than normal the last few years, but at least the latter two have improved. The heart disease thing really makes me nervous, even though I've never exhibited any specific risk conditions beyond the above numbers and some family history.
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