The northlondonhippy

Archive for February 26th, 2008

The fol­low­ing is an urgent health bul­letin from the north Lon­don lair of the northlondonhippy:

I’ve been ill for about the last week.

Bul­letin ends
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But this is a blog! You want details!

I went to work last Weds, feel­ing poorly and by the time I reached my office, I was shiv­er­ing and sweat­ing at the same time — I had a fever. I felt unbe­liev­ably bad, my joints ached, my back ached, every­thing hurt. I finally went home, where I spent the fol­low­ing 2 days, mainly in the same con­di­tion and sleep­ing as much as I could.

I also had the shits. The last time I had it this bad was fol­low­ing a trip to Soma­lia, around 15 years ago. That time, I got to visit the Hos­pi­tal for Trop­i­cal Dis­eases for tests, because I had it for 6 months. It wasn’t fun.

Since then, my bow­els have been rea­son­ably healthy, exclud­ing the odd curry, or minor bout of food poi­son­ing from the office can­teen. Fol­low­ing my expe­ri­ence 15 years ago, this last week has been a bit worrying.

The fever went last Fri­day and as long as I don’t eat solid food, I seem to be OK. Prob­lem is, my appetite returned on Sat­ur­day, but I dis­cov­ered quickly that eat­ing was still a bad idea.

Mrs. H and I had the­atre tick­ets for last night, some­thing we don’t do that often and we planned on hav­ing a meal out as well. We made the play, but had to miss out on din­ner, because I couldn’t risk eat­ing. Sad, eh?

Oh, the play was David Mamet’s “Speed the Plough” at the Old Vic, star­ring Jeff Gold­blum and Kevin Spacey. We both enjoyed it very much, but then with that cast and a Mamet script, you couldn’t pos­si­bly go wrong.

I don’t know what to do about eat­ing and I have to return to work tonight. I can’t live on cans of Coke for the next three shifts…or can I?

Caf­feine and sugar might work, if I ingest enough, I could cer­tainly run on purely Coca Cola for three days with­out any ill effects. I’m pos­i­tive 9 out of 10 doc­tors rec­om­mend a strict Coke-only diet to sort out your poopy guts.

I should check the NHS Direct web­site to see if it meets with their approval.

Any­thing that pre­vents you from ask­ing your doc­tor for help, meets with the NHS’s approval.

I haven’t called my doc­tor on this one, yet, because I really did check the NHS Direct web­site and based upon my symp­toms, I need to shit my brains out for a full 2 weeks before they have any con­cern, unless I am shit­ting blood or have incred­i­bly painful abdom­i­nal cramps. So far, no blood and my cramps are only mod­er­ately painful and they come and go.

What I think I have is some sort of intesti­nal infec­tion, which is why it started out with a fever as well. More than likely, my body will kill off the infec­tion before the NHS-prescribed 2 week period elapses and I’ll be pro­duc­ing solid poo’s again. I’ll send each and every one of you a text alert on that happy day, so make sure you keep your mobile phone switched on!

You see, this is what real blog­ging is all about…an inti­mate tour of my infected intestines. If they put a cam­era up my ass, rest assured the video will be uploaded to YouTube as soon as I can digi­tise it.

If any­one ever tells you that blog­ging is shit, just send them a link to this entry. Peo­ple like to be right and you would be pro­vid­ing them with the val­i­da­tion they so des­per­ately crave.