10-13-04 8:29 am: Unedited from my personal journal.

I am feeling so much better. I wish I had known that I was sick. I have worked so hard on writing consistently and suddenly, my writing was so difficult. It was hard just to type. I didn’t know that I was sick. It didn’t hit me fully until Sunday, but based on this last journal entry, I must have been sick. I wish I had known. I wouldn’t have been so panicked about it. I would have just written a quick entry that said, “By the way, I’m feeling sick and I’m going to take some time off. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

How can I be so out of touch with my body that I didn’t know I was sick until I couldn’t get out of bed? Sure, I got out of bed. I showered. I ate breakfast. I drank two cups of coffee. I prepared a lunch. I was so exhausted, that I called into the office, fully willing to go in if they said that they needed me. When they said that they didn’t need me, I went right back to bed and slept for four hours after drinking two cups of coffee. I’m angry at myself for being so out of touch with my body that I could be so sick and not even know it.

I guess I should give myself a bit of a break. Maybe this sickness was the kind that really sneaks up on you and you don’t really know you have it until you are knocked out in bed. That’s how it was for me. The only symptoms I had were exhaustion and a mondo sinus headache. I get tired all the time. I just work through it or sleep a little extra on the tired days. It has been a long time since I’ve had the kind of tired that doesn’t get better when I sleep. I slept all day Sunday and I still went right back to bed on Monday. When I couldn’t sleep, I just lay on the couch. I watched three movies on Monday and that was all I could do. I didn’t even crochet while watching. Sure, I held the needle and yarn, but not much crocheting was completed. All I needed to do to finish my afghan was crochet three squares. I think I’m on the third one right now.

I watched Bruce Almighty (really good! I have no idea why it didn’t take the theaters by storm), Win a Date with Tad Hamilton (so bad I had to watch another movie to get the taste of it out of my mouth) and School of Rock (Majorly good, but of course, it’s Jack Black, so it HAS to be good). I watched them in a dazed stupor and realized that all I was capable of was watching. I couldn’t do anything but lie on the couch and watch a movie.

Silly me, I had ordered DDR PC and paid the extra five bucks for next day delivery. When it arrived (three days later, those bastards owe me five bucks) I couldn’t bring myself to even install it on the computer until hours later. I had been so excited about the game because it had the mystical Lesson Mode that DDR UltraMix just doesn’t have. I wanted to learn those spins and crossovers that all the kids on the DDR forum were talking about, yet the game just sat unopened and uninstalled. I finally installed it in a sick haze and tried to play it using the arrow keys on the keyboard. Even then, I couldn’t get a higher grade than a C. Even playing on the keyboard was too much for me.

I’m wondering how long I’m going to last today. I felt good this morning. I finally got to play my game, although I still haven’t tried the Lesson Mode yet. I ate a good breakfast. I drank two cups of coffee. I got the uneaten lunch from Monday out of the fridge. I got to work on time and I still feel pretty good. I’m worried that I’m going to just tucker out and be useless the last half of the day. I didn’t last at all yesterday. I would feel better, then I took a shower and I was tired again. I would feel better then Mike took me to a restaurant to eat and I was tired again. So far, I’ve lasted a lot longer than any time yesterday. I just hope I can make it through the day.

It’s not like my job is taxing right now. Today, all that has been asked of me is to answer the phone and buzz a visitor into the office. I’ve been here an hour and I’ve answered the phone and buzzed someone into the office. I think I can make it through the day. Now, if they actually need some real work from me, I might get worn out. I guess we’ll see how the day progresses.

The best thing is that I have tons of ideas for blog entries and my fingers actually work today. I think I’ll be able to write today if I just let myself. I have lots of ideas and my fingers are itching to write them. I just need to get my morning pages written and get out all the weirdness like talking about how tired I was a couple of days ago.

Man, I’m still feeling anger at myself for not noticing that I was sick. I like to think that I’m in touch with my body. I realize that I have eating issues and I’m completely out of touch with my sense of hunger, but I’m surprised that I didn’t notice that I was sick. I was tired. I had such a hard time writing. Writing my morning pages was like a chore. It hasn’t felt like that for years and I thought I was dealing with some major writer’s block. Instead, I had the flu and I didn’t even notice it.

It’s like those stories that you hear about people who go into the doctor’s office because they aren’t able to walk and it turns out they have a head injury. They forgot that they hit their head and they didn’t notice the nausea, the dizziness and the other symptoms of a head injury. They just went to the doctor when they couldn’t walk anymore. Am I so out of touch with my body that I can’t even notice when I have the flu? I only notice when I can’t write anymore. I couldn’t write more than one sentence at a time and it never occurred to me that I might be sick. When am I going to notice this mortal coil?

I keep telling myself that it’s ok because this sickness didn’t have any symptoms, but that’s a lie. This sickness DID have symptoms. I was tired, incredibly tired. I was so tired that caffeine didn’t affect me. I just told myself that I needed to stop drinking caffeinated beverages. I told myself that I was getting immune to the caffeine. I had a sinus headache, but it responded well to OTC meds. I told myself that I was just having a normal headache from allergies. I had the shakes. I just told myself that I needed to listen to my hunger more closely. I disregarded all of the symptoms or attributed them to something else. Never once did it occur to me that I might be sick until I was so sick that I slept all day.

Based on Thursday’s entry, I was sick on Thursday. It took me until Sunday to realize that I MIGHT be sick. It wasn’t until I slept for four hours on two cups of coffee on Monday that I actually acquiesced and admitted that I MUST be sick. There’s nothing else that could explain all of these symptoms. When I called in on Monday, I actually felt like I was playing hooky, even though I could barely drag my butt out of bed. I thought I was just being lazy. Man, I need to learn to listen to my body.