virus day

7:04 PM 12/23/10

Having a stomach virus is very hard for someone who's emetophobic and will do ANYTHING to avoid vomiting.

Getting over a stomach virus today, and I'm sure I'll catch it again. The viruses will be on the bed or on the clothes I was wearing. I will have to clean those things to stop re-catching the virus. I got it at work from a girl who likes to run around pushing people and getting in your face and getting all over everyone. She's always touching everyone. I don't usually mind it. But yesterday she was close to me while she was using her phone and I smelled the fear smell, that adrenaline smell. It's the same thing I smell when Peter's having an insulin reaction. It happens when you vomit, too. She told me she had just vomited a few minutes ago. She was in my face several times and hugging and touching and running around me. I like her, but she sometimes gets on my nerves, and I didn't want to be close to her after she said she was vomiting and I smelled that fear smell. Then, she actually got ready to vomit again, right after she was getting in my face and pushing me around. She almost threw up in a trash can. So it was inevitable that I caught it. I catch stomach viruses very easily.

After being around her, I started feeling like I was going to vomit. So I didn't eat or drink anything. The virus was slightly different from the version of the stomach virus that I've had several times this year. With this virus, I was actually sensitive to smells. Every smell disgusted me, even mild smells. And I was having trouble controlling the muscle contractions - they were happening on their own and I couldn't stop them. Usually I can fight to suppress them. But I would get a vomit-contraction if I yawned, or if I moved my mouth the wrong way, or moved my tongue. I was glad I didn't have a full stomach because I would have thrown up right away and there would have been no hope of controlling it. So that was different. The past couple viruses I had, I didn't notice smells making me sick, and I didn't have uncontrollable muscle contractions, and I was able to fight it.

We got it because of Christmas. When large numbers of people travel, they always cause outbreaks of the Norovirus. It happens during football season too. It's predictable, consistent, and reliable. Our managers at Weis always complained that lots of people called off sick during football games, and they were always assuming that was because people wanted to go to the game or watch it on TV. But I hate football, and I never watch it at all, but I still always get sick right around football game days. A whole bunch of people get sick for real.

So I called off work today. I stayed in bed all day and just drank a little bit of water, and then later on, sugar water.

*****

Theme: The revival of hope. I've gotten hit with a drug on my clothing, with St. John's Wort, and it was the herbal residue version of it, along with the tobacco plant residues. Both of those are mixed together in the residues from the other apartment. That particular mix makes me very friendly, cheerful, and hopeful, and it also causes sexual arousal. But even though I know that I'm having a drug-induced mood, I am still wondering about hope.

I can only be hopeful for real if something has changed in my life that will make it so that the same problems don't happen again and again. The only new thing is that I've been reading about time management and self-motivation. I don't know if that's enough to make a major change in my life that will permanently improve things for real.

But I always feel hopeful after the winter solstice anyway. The days will be getting longer. We are still losing heat in the Northern Hemisphere, so the weather will get worse, but the light will be brighter and warmer.