being ill suXor

whats yr worst illness saga? (nb: this is not mine, but perhaps i'll share that one down thread a bit.)

I'm never ill. Next question.

Well......my bout of shingles earlier this year was the most painful illness I've ever had. But it was gone in 10 days or so. So I'd have to say the worst illness I ever had was glandular fever when I was 13 or 14. It lasts forever and it's awful, just total exhaustion all day for months.

My chin seems to have some kind of chronic growth.

Will one of you spike Petes drink with some deadly virus? Or has this been tried?

awww, poor jess *sympathy* i once had an extremely bad fever, i know not what it was, only that i literally soaked the bedsheets with sweat and was crying out in my dreams that i had to go and meet a dolphin in his house ubder the sea. my mum was quite worried about me. have you had any interesting delusions Jess?

no, and that's a disappointment. the last time i had a fever this bad i was having all sorts of hallucinations relating to maurice sendak books.

i'm going to the doctor this afternoon. down to 100 or so, which while not great, is certainly an improvement.

When my sister had measles (her 10, me 7) she unbeknownst to us slept in my bed all day when she was off school to give me said disease. Needlessly to say I didn't catch it. I work in a university with the highest proportion of international students in London - you'd think a Beijing flu or two would have wung itself my way sooner or later. But no.

You're going to get sick someday. and everyone will laugh in your face and not be sypmathetic. then you will rue, yes rue, all of this.

Twice in my life when I was sick, as a child, my temperature ran to 105 degrees and I hallucinated locusts. Not little grasshoppers, but the finger-sized locust variety. In the first instance they were hopping all throughout my bed, in my sheets, across my clothing .. I screamed and leapt out, shaking the sheets everywhere, only to realize they'd disappeared and my parents thought me mad.

In the second, about two years later, I saw one giant grasshopper, a couple of feet long ... on whose back the characters from the T&C Nintendo game were surfing and skateboarding. I was somewhere between the land of dreams, fever and awakeness, but I was definitely not asleep because I remember sitting up in bed and rubbing my eyes, which did not do the trick. I stared and yelled for my mom, and the image faded. But as I sat out in the hallway, thermometer stuck in my mouth, I kept pointing at this little gap between the closet and the closet door because the space was too small to throw my thermometer through. Then my head cleared and I realized I was thinking gibberish .. meanwhile my mum had been wondering why I was pointing at the closet.

I got better, in both cases.

Pete are you counting unusual physical manifestations as illness?

NO TOM.

The world need not know about that...

Just checking. What about hangovers?

My worst recent illness - I cant remember any really bad ones apart from the usual childhood shite - was when I gouged my knee and blithely went to the pub instead of cleaning it up. It turned horrible and pussy and black and infected and my WHOLE LOWER LEG swelled up. Then I saw sense and started throwing disinfectant all over it but not before I'd got a fever. The fever I dealt with using Tennants lager and the Daft Punk album.

About five years ago, I'd had increasing pain in my abdomen for a couple of hours, but figured it was nothing to worry about. In the middle of a meeting at work, I suddenly had to lie down. Like, immmediately. Slid under the table. Realized that this was maybe not a good thing, hauled myself up, walked out of the building and to my doctor's (which was a couple of blocks away). He happened to be in, examined me for about 30 seconds, and said "I'm calling you a cab. Go to the hospital RIGHT NOW. Looks like your appendix is about to rupture."

Ended up having my appendix out that evening and spending the next week or so at home, lying on my absent roommate's bed (since getting to mine involved climbing up a short ladder, which I was in no condition to do)--my girlfriend brought me food so I wouldn't starve.

NB my tired brane wrote "disinfectant" above when I meant "antiseptic". I did not put bleach on my leg wound.

A couple of years ago, I caught this flu-like virus in my tiny little mitts and didn't let go. Knocked me out for about 3 days - the bookending days were cake & pie compared to Day #2, which found my body completely unwilling to move or stand up or do anything short of lie down & sweat. I had to crawl to get to my bathroom; standing up would've sent me falling in any number of directions. Woke up long enough to call out sick, slept until 4 or 5 in the PM (still weary, but not so bad - able to get out of my stanky bedroom, make a huge bowl of soup, and fall on the couch, draining my nose, watching Kids in the Hall & other comedic gems). (And did I mention the Technicolor viscous splendor of my boogers?).

Recently, if I've called out sick, it's usually due to mental exhaustion masquerading as hack-wheeze-cough.

Flu for a couple of weeks...lots of time off work. Night Nurse trauma...worked one night, then the next...jel= no sleep, swimming in sweat.

Touch wood, I haven't been seriously ill since I was 2 (apparently - I have no idea what I had), but the most unpleasant and long-running illness saga was a brush with those fun little critters, Scabies. Unwittingly caught when my girlfriend and I slept in her flatmates double bed when she was away (I'm surprised we didn't figure it out earlier, she was a reet scabby cow - the flatmate, not my girlfriend), it led to 7 weeks of constant, debilitating itching. The first four weeks we didn't know what it was - I get eczema sometimes, so wasn't overly concerned, but she doesn't. Eventually I went to the doctor, and he rather gleefully revealed the details of my condition (which is annoyingly classed as an STD, even though none of the, erm, lesions were anywhere near our respective groins). The treatment is the same pesticide stuff you use to get rid of headlice, but you have to apply it to everywhere (*everywhere*) below the neck and keep it there for 24 hours. You then have to burn all your possessions... well, not quite, but you're supposed to make everything you touch is thoroughly de-loused.

Needless to say, the treatment failed to work. Three times. By the fourth, I was almost in tears, having been ACTUALLY in tears for several nights at the intensity of the itching. But, thank Christ, it worked, and the foul beasties haven't come near me since.

i broke my leg 2 years skateboarding. it was the end of the summer and i was transfering to a new college. i layed on the couch and watched 90210 4 times a day. Thank you FX. I got to school and i had to hobble around these god forsaken hills(Lynchburg, VA eat me)on crutches. Asking people for help with your food in the cafeteria is no fun either. i hated being all gimped up.

Obviously my body could not cope with the sheer physical excitement of a IL* FAP on the 13th because the following day I started developing serious chest pains.

Eventually I was admitted to hospital (for the first time) diagnosed with spontaneous pneumothorax (a collapsed lung), and taken in for surgery. This involved sticking a tube with a camera inside the lung to assess the damage, before spraying a form of talcum powder around to stick the lung back to the chest wall in a bid to prevent it happening again. I was warned in advance this would be extremely painful. It was.

By the time I came round finding myself unable to sit up, tubes coming out of my chest, on oxygen, with only a cocktail of injectable mind-blending morphine based painkillers standing between agony and acute agony, trying to find other ways to pass the time than counting down to the next injection. All men between 20-40, especially long thin men (which I'm not) can suddenly develop a collapsed lung apparently. You have been warned.

I was discharged yesterday to spend today's birthday at home (hurrah!) but really should be back in bed and not behind the computer. A sobering and painful experience, you learn who your real friends are (Burundian pal G. visited every day), and who aren't (mother-in-law didn't want me discharged on certain day as it would mean daughter couldn't attend a party she'd organised!) you feel confronted with your mortality.

Being ill truly suXor.

jeepers stevo, look after yr self

back to bed now!! (and get well soon obv)

Shite Stevo!!! Get back to bed!! And yr mother in law suxx0rs far more than imaginable. Take care of yourself!!

Fucking hell Dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hope your recovery is speedy, thought you'd been a bit quiet lately

Blimey. Best wishes.

Did you get to the wedding or not?

Eep. Get well soon, Stevo.

In a few words, fucking fuck fuck. Rest thineself, leave the computer alone for a while, and mentally project the pain onto your mother in law.

Take it easy Stevo, stay away from tense footie matches on TV.

yeah take care stevo. get well soon.

Bad luck, Stevo - take it very easy indeed and get well soon.

I am, however, pleased to find that there is an illness that I am too old to develop. Hurrah!

Quick visit to say thanks very much for your best wishes everyone. Really appreciated.

Graham - thankfully it happened after the wedding so I did make it.

Now back to bed.