I got up later and discovered I had a case of food poisoning or some 24-hour bug. First symptoms hit around 6 PM yesterday. Between midnight and now I managed about 4 hours of sleep.
Lay down. Almost go to sleep. Get up. Go to bathroom. Repeat.
..."Imodium"? Imodium is for #2; I had to urinate a lot last night because I was drinking lots of fluids; and I was drinking lots of fluids because I had the highest fever I've had in literal decades: I had three degrees of fever last night. I didn't have that much of a fever when I had appendicitis!
Tylenol took care of the fever, but there was nothing to be done about the kidneys--and so around five or so I was beginning to wonder if I'd died and gone to hell.
Imodium, in fact, made the problem worse. I took the usual 2 tabs right after the first blowdown, and it jammed my gut up solid. The fever started around 7-ish and peaked around midnight, and the cramping and bloating made me wonder if I'd perforated a diverticulum or something equally dire. At midnight I gave Mom instructions to wake me up at 3 AM so I could take my temperature, and to call an ambulance if I was unresponsive.
I was awake at 3, though. Despite my fatigue, I was getting out of bed every twenty minutes to go wee. I had some hard-boiled eggs and shut her alarm off before it woke her.
As it turns out, it's just a 24-hour bug after all, and my fevered brain was overreacting. The pain was caused by cramping (due to the Imodium) and the fever was caused by my gut having to retain poisonous stuff rather than blow it out. How do I know? Because I woke up around 11-ish this morning with no fever, desperately wanting a shower and food; and in fact I just finished eating half a footlong Subway Melt (left over from dinner last night).
I don't feel good but it sure ain't diverticulitis.
This makes yet another check mark in the "don't interrupt your body's defense mechanisms unless you absolutely have no other choice" column. I'm convinced the Imodium made this worse than it had to be.
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A vaccine is not a cure. Let's hearken back to Benjamin Franklin, writing Poor Richard's Almanac, which included all sorts of old aphorisms, including "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
A vaccine is prevention. If this treatment actually reduces or eliminates melanoma, it's a cure, not a vaccine.
*sigh*
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Michelle Malkin on Democrat tax theory.
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More scaremongering, this time over turning the lights on at night. Oh! If you get up to go wee at 2:42 in the morning, don't turn the light on for a few moments so you don't trip and fall over the cat, shattering your right arm and requiring a trip to the hospital and six months of physical therapy, because you might slightly increase your risk of cancer!
This is just as stupid as that story a few months ago talking about copper pipes causing heart disease. WTF, has the entire nation of England lost its ability to do science?
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The recession is not over. The article is couched in cautious terms, not actually saying it, but WTF, we know it's not over.
At least, I do.
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Yesterday afternoon I had to bury a possum.
I took some pictures of the tulips, since I've never seen the tulips bloom at the same time as the daffodils; and then ambled around the house, planning to take a nap afterwards. I got by the back of the garage and *sniff* blech--what the hell is....
Furry body behind the garage, on the bunged-up ladder, behind the rowboat.
...so I moved the ladder and the boat, got out a spade, dug a hole, and buried the poor thing.
Animal control had been out this way last week, but with the temperatures we've had I don't think the possum could have been dead for more than three or four days. No idea what killed it, and I wasn't going to try to figure it out when its gut was full of maggots.
Animal control traps and releases; they don't poison. My theory was that the thing got injured and then got away from them, crawled over behind the garage, and died. But wild animals die all the time for all sorts of reasons and it might have had nothing whatsoever to do with animal control.
At least it was a possum and not a cat.
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As for me, the gut is still bothering me and I'm still tired, so I'm going to hit the hay.