Friday morning I woke up feeling slightly queasy. It wasn’t too bad at first, but by the time I was almost ready to head out the door, the room had started to spin, so I decided to stay home. I went back to bed and promptly slept for about two and a half hours more, which is pretty unusual for me. I don’t sleep a lot when I’m sick, even though I probably should.

I woke up feeling no better. I was so dizzy and nauseous I could hardly sit up straight and started breaking out in cold sweats. I lay on the couch for most of the rest of the day and watched TV, even though I had a hard time focusing. I managed to get some ginger ale and jello down, though it was quite an effort, but every time I got up and walked around at all, I threw up. I took some Alka-Seltzer to try to calm my stomach down, but I even threw that up. I took two more naps that day, which is really unprecedented, and went to sleep feeling terrible. I hadn’t had a fever at all, but I was effectively bedridden by the nausea and vertigo and hadn’t been able to keep anything down all day.

On Saturday I felt much better, though still sick. I managed to have some ramen soup for lunch and even ate a regular dinner, though I still felt queasy and had to lie down most of the day to keep the room from spinning too much. When I did get up, I had to walk slowly and be careful not to turn my head too fast, or I would nearly fall over. Fortunately, I didn’t throw up at all that day.

Sunday, though, was worse again. Still no vomiting, but I was so nauseous that even ginger ale was hard to get down. I seriously began to wonder what was wrong with me. I’d never had a stomach flu that lasted this long or caused dizziness, and it actually seemed that the vertigo was the primary symptom, with nausea being a result rather than a cause.

On Monday I stayed home from work and school again and made an appointment to go to the doctor. Brinestone drove me to the student health center, and it was a pretty miserable ride, as every little bounce and bump made me sick. The doctor checked me out and said it was probably an inner ear infection, or labyrinthitis. She gave me a prescription for an anti-vertigo drug, but somehow the pharmacy didn’t get the prescription, though the pharmacist said that over-the-counter Dramamine was effectively the same thing.

I took some Dramamine when I got home, and it seemed to help quite a bit. I was able to eat dinner again that night, and I felt well enough the next morning to drag myself to school, though I still didn’t feel very well, even with the Dramamine. Luckily the only class I’d missed was German, because all my other classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that also means I’d missed about eleven hours of work. My next paycheck is going to suck.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so miserably sick in all my life. I’ve been uncomfortably motion sick before, but never completely incapacitated by vertigo. Of course, this is slightly remedied by the fact that I get to tell people that I had something labyrinthitis. You’ve got to admit that sounds pretty awesome.