Bring on thee pain royale

I have been sick a lot lately. My mom thinks that it goes back to February this year when I caught pneumonia, while I was moving from my house to an apartment, doing the majority of packing and loading my car and carrying everything by myself, in the cold nighttime, after work in the wee hours of the morning (1-4 am). Plus I had the stress of working at a new job which I figured that I would not last long at if I even managed to make it all the way through the 8 weeks of training. I could barely talk, coughed constantly, ran a cold shivering fever constantly, suffered through hot flashes, and could barely stay awake in my exhaustion. I seriously should have been in the hospital, but that would have meant that I would not get to keep the job I doubted I would keep anyway. So I plugged away night after night, staggering with box load after box load as I sweated in the freezing cold all while wondering if the new neighbors would find my nearly lifeless body the next morning lying on my doorway when I blacked out. Luckily that did not happen, my immune system fought tooth and nail to keep me alive without medicine, and I even stayed at that job regardless of how little affection I honestly feel towards it.

I was feeling better after my latest bout until last night. I was already exhausted from trying to work a couple 12 hour days to work off some of the points I have accumulated from being sick and missing work and was slowing regaining some strength back into my voice as the broken glass which I swear was buried somewhere within my throat started to work it's way loose. Then I turned into a broken toy.

We stopped and snagged some food to take home after work, and I ate about twice as much as I should have but I blame that on it being tasty. I mixed a drink and sat down at my computer to play a couple simple videogames to amuse myself as I winded down and prepared to catch a bit of very needed sleep. Too bad, so sad, I got a single hour of intensely bloody nightmare soaked rest while I lay curled up in a ball on my bed in so much pain that I couldn't even cry. But you can bet that I did whimper pitifully quite a bit. Once again I got to enjoy, and actually still am, the suffering of food poisoning.

There was no way for me to get comfortable enough to manage any rest all night long. When the pain became unbearable I would roll off my bed onto the floor and stagger into the bathroom in an attempt to purge my stomach enough that the pain would lower enough to allow me a brief, yet still very painful and brief respite. The bad thing was that my stomach had no desire to listen to logic and purge itself to allow the both of us to feel better. It fought me on that every single time.

My cycle for several hours was:
1) crying on my bed curled up in as tight of a ball as I could manage
2) falling to the floor
3) sticking my finger so far down my throat that I could feel my spine
4) waiting for about a minute as I cried about keeping that same finger poking the very back of my tongue wondering why it wasn't making me sick
5) coughing and gagging up a small amount of orangish slime which tasted even worse than it looked
6) repeating steps 3 and 4 several times
7) staggering back to bed with eyes blurry from tears to start again at step 1

This process occurred about every half hour for about 8 straight hours. It is not often that I cry and has been a few months since I have but last night and today I have cried more than I probably have over the past few years added up together and wrapped up in fancy paper and ribbon. Finally I managed to start gagging up clear liquid and the pain stayed at a constant, and barely bearable level. Of course all the cramps and pain in my stomach, along with the forced vomiting, caused my back to strain several muscles in it as well.

Luckily, this story could not get any worse, as long as you leave out how I was supposed to work today and although I could barely stand up straight still had to run my roommate to work since he was unable to get ahold of anyone to pick him up. Or when he called me after I had gotten back home and collapsed to inform me that my boss told him that I was required to come in today regardless of the shape I was in and had to manage to last a couple of hours because the company we contract for needs more billable hours and is threatening to make overtime mandatory (regardless of the fact that they will lose countless hours when a significant portion of the call center gets fired for not being able to comply with an additional 3 hours per day per person for 2 months straight).

So already weak from the first car ride I had to make another one to the other side of town. I almost fell climbing out of my car and shuffled my way slowly across the parking lot with one arm tightly wrapped around my tummy. About one minute after collapsing into a chair (and almost missing and half hanging off the edge) while I was very shakily setting up my desk to start taking calls, my boss walks over and asks if I am OK. Of course my natural sarcasm kicks in and I smile at her through eyes on the verge of tears and say that, "I am fine, why do you ask?" Of course she rolls her eyes and tells me that I look horrible and what is wrong. "No, no, I really am fine, other than the severe food poisoning which kept me curled up in ball without sleep all night while I cried and cursed my virtual nonexistent gag reflex as I shoved a finger down my throat about 30 times or so to little effect." So she sent me home since I was obviously going to be more worthless than normal on the phones (my evaluation, not hers). As I slowly shuffled my way towards the door, I got chased down by a couple of guys who insisted that they walk me to my car to keep me from falling down in the parking lot because I looked about ready to black out.

Fortunately it is a rare occurrence for my physical pain to come close to matching the emotional and psychological kind that I live with daily. At least the mental kind has worn itself into a sort of numbness over the past 30 years.

(Afterthoughts)
The fact that I 'sucked' so bad at "finger down my throat bulimia" has got to be either horrifying or extremely erotic. Sadly, this was not a situation where no gag reflex was any type of advantage.