Severe dehydration is no fun
If you’ve ever considered severe dehydration as a valid form of weight loss I highly discourage it.
This past Sunday I woke up with a bit of a headache but nothing major. Pop a couple aspirin to kill it and get on with the day. About 10am I went over to my parent’s house to pick up our kid that spent the night. By the time I got there I had a raging headache. I figured a migrane was coming on so I popped a vicodin to kill it before it dug in too deep.
I took the kid home and by the time I got there my head was exploding. I couldn’t stand lights or sounds so I crawled into bed to hide from the world. An hour later the real fun started. I sat up feeling a bit woozy and realized I’d better get to the bathroom quickly. I spent the next 6 hours on-and-off throwing up and lying on the bathroom floor. Every time I tried to drink something to replace fluids it’d trigger another attack. I was spiraling downhill faster and faster. Around 6pm my wife had had enough. I’d drank and vomited back up over 1/2 gallon of Gatorade. So she took me to the E.R.
Honestly, I don’t remember much of the E.R. Only being very, very cold and being told by the staff that I couldn’t have a blanket to keep warm. Bastards. They put me on an I.V. for over an hour and squeezed fluids into me. They plied me with anti-nausea meds, chemo-therapy patient grade I’m told, so I could try to keep something down. The doc said it wasn’t the flu as it’d be her first case this year and one of the worst she’d ever seen. Some ‘quick onset viral thing’ was what I remember her saying. All I know is I was hallucinating something fierce.
Once we got home after 9pm I made a bunch of quick calls to my manager and folks from work to try to get someone to cover my class Monday. Luckily there was a local instructor that was off this week to fill in for me. All I know is I never want to feel that bad ever again in my life. I’m still downing fluids like it’s going out of style and I know I lost a few pounds due to the illness but I did get back to work today though not at quite 100%.