The sickness - read at your own risk!

I became atrociously ill this weekend. After skiing all day I was enjoying (and winning) a game of Simpsons Monopoly when my stomach started feeling bad. I went to use the facilities and realized suddenly that I felt like I was going to throw up.

And throw up I did. This was about 8 o'clock at night and the next 12 hours involved sleeping in 1-hour intervals interrupted by trips to the toilet (thank God for ensuites!) and alternating chills and sweats. My body was obviously purging and after about 5 hours my upper GI tract was empty. That was some serious vomiting. By the end, it was just the water I was drinking that was coming up, so I stopped drinking and started wetting my mouth and spitting the water out to try and get some relief but to avoid any more hurling. Then the dry heaving, oh my.

I didn't quite realize it until Monday when I went for a walk outside and the cold air made me cough, but the muscles all around and between my ribs and around my whole torso and up into my neck were spent. Tired and sore from the most intense retching I've ever experienced. My throat hurt, but not in the scratchy kind of way. My reverse peristalsis muscles had obviously been overworked.

The rest of the night was spent ridding my lower GI tract of anything and everything. Enough said.

The next morning I started drinking mouthfuls of water every 10 minutes or so and gradually started feeling better. My lower back was pretty achy, but other than that, and the fatigue and dizziness I felt if I moved too quickly I was feeling ok. By dinner time I drank a glass of juice. Before going back to bed I had some soup. By Monday morning, everything was mostly back to normal.

I weighed myself when we got home and I lost nearly 5 lbs over the course of the weekend. I joked that I had finally gotten around to doing that cleanse I keep meaning to do. My system was clean!

I'm a bit concerned that my hands will swell up and blister since they have a tendency to do that after I experience any kind of nausea, but so far so good. Maybe my immune system will decide to give me a break this time. My stomach is still a bit sensitive and I'm still pretty easily fatigued, but I'm ok with spending a couple days reading and resting.

I'm so glad I did my long run last week. I'm not really concerned about missing any training days this week. I'll probably run on Thursday or Friday and I'm sure I'll be fine for our "short" 13-miler on Sunday.

I don't know what it was that I ate but apparently there's no such thing as a "24-hour flu" so I'm left blaming some anonymous mystery food and trying to ignore the fact that there was likely some fecal-oral contamination involved, as that is likely and usually the origin of such unpleasant afflictions. Ick.