I was very physically ill on Saturday. I’m writing about it here because this is after all my personal web log, where it’s “an official record of events.” I find monetization of web logging abhorrent. If you want to write on the web, there are so many better avenues. Be advised that what follows is very graphic about the physical manifestations of my illness.

I am blessed with great health, far better than many. I am on occasion ill, with occasion being measured in years between incidents (so far in my life, but going forward, who knows?). Except for yesterday.

Yesterday around 2 in the afternoon I began to experience vertigo. Over the course of 30 minutes it went from mild to severe, where I could barely stand erect long enough to move from the T.V. room back to my bedroom. This was the same intensity of vertigo I experienced in September 2019. That period of vertigo was so intense that I went into a local hospital and spent the night for observation as well as some rather strong medications to bring it under control. This time I didn’t want another trip and stay. Instead I was trying to perform the exercises with my head to bring the vertigo under control. Those exercises are supposed to calm the inner ear, which when it goes wonky is how you wind up so dizzy.

That didn’t work. Instead it made me even more nauseous to the point I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up. And I mean full ballistic vomiting. I stayed over the commode until it was just dry heaves, washed out my mouth and then stumbled back into the bed. That unfortunately wasn’t the end of it. Over the next hour I went back in three more times for three more sessions. After the last session my body told my mind it was finished with my stomach. That’s when the G.I. tract decided it wanted to chime in, so my next visit was for diarrhea. Fortunately that was only one trip, but once was enough. By the time I was completely finished with my bathroom trips I was dripping cold sweat and worn out. I went back to bed and slept solidly for three hours.

By the time I woke up the nausea was pretty much gone. I drank a fair amount of water to avoid dehydration, but I wasn’t hungry so I ate nothing. I went back to bed later that evening and unfortunately woke up around 4 am this morning.

A lot of folks at this point are probably thinking “COVID!” I almost thought that as well, except it has all the earmarks of food poisoning. The only question is by what. I sure didn’t eat anything from outside of the home yesterday. And considering how quickly it came upon me, and how quickly it subsided, along with the symptoms, leads me to believe in food poisoning. But none of the typical vectors of food poisoning in the home came up. For example I can’t stand mayonnaise, or other types of condiments, and thus don’t eat those. Everything I ate that morning was either cooked or heated except for some fruit I had later in the day, and it was washed as usual. Right now, no clues.

This morning I’m mostly back to normal. There is some residual tiredness, and a very minor headache on the right side of my head around the temple, but it’s nearly gone now. No nausea to be sure. Just a very intense period of illness for half-a-day yesterday.

I just wish I knew what happened to me.

Update

I took the iHealth COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test at home. I tested negative.

As I’ve grown older my diet has changed away from what I used to eat and drink in my youth. One of those changes is my ability to handle sodas, and then diet sodas. I gave up sugared sodas thirty or so years ago in my late thirties. There wasn’t much in the way of diet sodas, but fortunately for me I was able to switch over to Diet Coke, which had been released back in 1982. I didn’t care for the taste all that much, but I didn’t have much choice as I was rapidly gaining weight; my doctor at the time told me to drop the regular Coke habit or basically die young. So with that rather blunt choice I chose to drink diet Coke.

Over the following decades I switched around to various diet sodas as they became available, keeping diet Coke as my fallback soda. The only diet soda I couldn’t stand was diet Pepsi. I just couldn’t drink it. If I went to a restaurant that only served diet Pepsi then I switch to ice water.

Over the last few years I’ve been dropping diet soda consumption to zero. I discovered I was reaching a point of intolerance; I couldn’t handle the taste nor the after effects of consuming it. So I would stop cold turkey, usually for a month or so, then “fall off the wagon” and start drinking it again. After another period of abstinence I picked up a bunch of twelve ounce diet Coke packs (eight bottles to a pack) because a local Publix supermarket had a buy two, get two free sale. So I stocked up and started binging diet Cokes again, usually three or four at a time.

Over the past week I haven’t felt particularly well. I felt tired, wound up napping a lot during the day, and in general felt like I had low energy. I also had a ‘vague’ headache; nothing painful, but annoying. Then I ran down the diet Cokes and stopped drinking any of them three days ago. It was almost magical; my energy slowly returned and the vague headache went away. Right now I’m feeling pretty good.

I think my body is trying to tell me something about consuming diet Cokes, as in, don’t. Since switching back to ice water (you know, ice out of the freezer mixed with water in a glass) a number of little things are better; my mouth doesn’t have this permanent aftertaste, my stomach isn’t bloated, and other minor complaints seem to have just gone. I can comfortably live with my body again.

I’m completely done with the witches brews of diet sodas, especially diet Coke. Ice water, and maybe brewed teas (I used to make pitchers of brewed unsugared tea), are the drinks for me, especially water.