Midnight lurgy

When I started this blog, I intended to write about all my health problems and my attempts to fix them by trying various remedies and seeing what worked and what didn't. To the relief of most of you, probably, I have ended up hardly mentioning health matters at all! But this post is, I'm afraid, all about being struck down with a tummy bug, so avert your eyes if you are feeling at all delicate.

Having had four weeks with a ghastly cough, I was delighted when it finally went. But my delight was short-lived when Mr Grumpy caught a cold and gave it to me a fortnight ago. On Monday, I was just starting to snuffle a bit less and was beginning to make arrangements again. In fact, I had things booked in for every day this week and was wondering when I was going to be able to fit in my latest editing job.

When I flopped into bed around 11.30 on Monday night, I felt fine. At just after 1 am, I awoke and didn't know what was going on at all. The whole room was not spinning, but whirling round, as if I was on some ghastly fairground ride, and I was so boiling hot that I thought my body was going to explode and I was spontaneously combusting.

I was very scared. I don't think I have ever felt quite so peculiar and unwell. I even wondered if I was dying. Wondering if I needed the loo, I lurched there, clutching furniture as things were still whirling. Then I started to feel nauseous. The only handy receptacle was my plastic waste paper basket, so I emptied out all the tissues, receipts and packaging material from my latest Amazon splurge, and rang Mr G on his mobile. We both keep our phones on all night. We've slept in separate rooms for several years now because of my insomnia and his snoring, and since his strokes, we both decided we should stay in phone contact in case he had another one in the middle of the night. But this time it was I who was in need and he who was too deeply asleep to hear the ringtone. (Turned out he'd switched it to Silent, the b******!)

Clutching my waste bin, I staggered up the stairs, hauling my way up the banisters, world still whirling, and found him asleep with Flad. He took a lot of waking. In fact, I wondered if he was dead! But finally the bedclothes heaved, his head emerged from beneath the duvet, the temperature having gone down to only 7C indoors, and he kindly got up and sat with me for two hours in the living room, listening to my groans, both of us swathed in blankets. By now, I was well and truly suffering from what can only be described as a 'both ends job', if you know what I mean!

I wondered if I had caught the Norovirus, but he felt my head and said it wasn't that as I didn't have a temperature. I felt as if I had been poisoned. I had terrible stomach pain, but not the cramps you get when you have a gastric bug. He and I had both eaten his home-cooked shepherds pie and he was okay, so it couldn't have been that. The only thing I had consumed that was any different to him was a tiny plastic container of something called Tipples. A friend had given me several at Christmas, I'd discovered one at the back of the fridge last night and had drunk it and had merrily remarked that it tasted a bit like sick. Many a true word... Mr G pointed out that, if it contained cream, it could have gone rancid and upset my stomach. He had made porridge a few weeks ago, not realising the milk had gone off, and he had been very ill, too.

By 3 am, we had both decided I wasn't about to snuff it, despite my getting heart palpitations. So he went back to bed and I was left to cope alone with the hell of frequent attacks of vomiting and diarrhoea. I found two Immodium Melts and took those and after one more attack, that particular end of my body stopped misbehaving. In fact, it has probably stopped functioning forever, knowing how strong Immodium is! I was still sick a couple more times, then was finally able to fall into a coma-like sleep, propped upright on several pillows, only to awake with a completely stiff neck and horrible headache, which I've still got.

As soon as the chemist's opened, Mr G went out and bought me some Dioralyte rehydration sachets, the unflavoured sort, thank goodness, as I couldn't have stomached blackcurrant, and I sipped my way through a couple of sachets of that. By the evening, I felt able to nibble a plain digestive biscuit. Today, I feel very feeble, my cough is back and I can hardly sit down as the whole of my undercarriage feels as if it has been scalded, then scrubbed with a Brillo pad. Every time I have a pee, I have to lean far forward to ensure it doesn't touch the painful areas. It's misery, but I hope I shall be okay by the weekend as it's my birthday on Sunday and friends are taking me out for an Italian meal on Saturday night - though one of them has now been felled by bronchitis. Oh, miserable winter days! It's been too cold, too long. I've almost worn out my thermals! Roll on, Spring.

I am now trying to summon up the energy to change my bedding, something I think all of us want to do when we've been ill, to get rid of the sweaty, germ-ridden sheets and swap them for some fresh, clean new ones. One odd thing has resulted from my spell of illness, in that a spoonful of sugar in my tea tasted so awful that I have cut down to a quarter of a teaspoonful. Maybe the diet starts today!