A mysterious illness

Monday morning, Dec. 5th, 7:00 a.m., a woman wakes up before her alarm clock. She makes a tiny move and feels a sword plunging right into the middle of her being. Is she dreaming? The tip of the sword gorges deeper rupturing her stomach and pushing its contents up to her gaping mouth. She jumps up and barely makes it to the bathroom. Propelled by cataclysmic spasms in the depth of her body a disgusting reeky sickly greenish-brownish venom pours out of her into the toilet bowl. She grips toilet seat, her knuckles white, as not to drop her head in the poisonous brew.

When her stomach is empty of all liquid and gall, she drags the limp limbs coated in cold sweat back to bed. No thoughts in her head except: oooh, uuuh, oooh, ouhhh; no strength to pull the covers over her. Empty-headed, her whole body one throbbing epicenter of pain, she lies in bed motionless, like a corpse. Minutes later the same sword is torturing her again. This time she doesn't quite make it to the bathroom on time leaving a trail of sickly sploches on the floor. The barfing is excruciating as there is nothing in her stomach. She moans, she even weeps a little. A part of her conscious self thinks: am I dying? is this a heart attack? a stroke? She had read that some people at the moment of a stroke lose control over their bowels. She feels panicky. What a way to go, slumped over a toilet bowl, like Jimmy Hendrix... these are bizzare thoughts, her conscious self rummages while the rest of her does the business of spewing poison via all orifices of her body.

Still, she lives, she crawls back to bed. She thinks: should I call someone. Looks around, can't fiind the cell. Knows she can't make it to the land-line phone and anyhow she doesn't know any numbers. Korean 119 is useless as she can't speak Korean. She feels panicky again. Looks around her and is relieved to find out that nothing appears blurry or distorted. Her vision is o.k. She had read volumes about stroke after her Mother's death, in a sort of preparation for it. It's hereditary, you know. This isn't it.

Just as she's drifting into slumber which flashes weird images behind her half-closed lids (her grandma lying on a pile of wheat or some other grain (?!) that forever crumbles and moves her body in a way that she appears floating, her dad slumped over his accounting sheets and his calculator, one pair of glasses on his forehead, another on his nose), she has to make another dart to the bathroom. She feels as if a powerful hand is trying to rip out her stomach.

Dry vomiting is horrible. She knows she had to swallow some liquid. Leaning against the wall, the fridge, kithen counters she manages to fill the kettle with water. Waiting for it to boil feels like a century. With shaking hands she fumbles through her many containers to find some rosehip tea. Finally, after a century of shaking, sweating and swearing, she has a steaming cup of tea in her hands. Lemon! She remembers a horrendous food poisoning episode from her childhood. She was sever or eight; her aunt and uncle were staying at her parents' cottage house; they gave her some pocket money; she used it all on 6 scoops of fruit-flavoured ice-cream that made sick as a dog for 4 or 5 horrible days. Her aunt, a doctor, healed her somehow, allowing her only to drink rosehip tea with lemon and nibble on extremely dry toast. So, is this food poisoning, she wonders as she runs to the bathroom one more time, with her tea half finished.
She absolutely has to be in her classes this day. She can't cancel. Her students have final quizzes AND she has to prepare them. Seerves her right, she thinks. She had a whole bloody weekend to prepare. A just punishment, she muses masochistically. God only knows how, but she manages to sit in front of her computer and prepare the quiz sheets; she cleans herself up a bit, puts on her clothes, goes to the copy room, makes a hundred photo copies... all this of course interrupted with numerous frantic runs to the bathroom.
Students see that something is wrong with her. They are sweet; they offer help; they say she should cancel the quiz (this, probably,not entirely for her sake). The quizes are held. One from 10-11, one from 4-5 and one from 6-7. The rest of the classes she must cancel; she's too weak to stand and too embarassed to run to the bathroom all the time followed by well-meaning students who listen to her retching and offer assistance.

By 5:00 her orifices are dry, but the rest of her is a Ganges of liquid pain that seeps into every pore and cell of the vast expanses of her body. Even blinking hurts.

So, it's not food poisoning after all; it's a bug, a weird small creature with the power to fell a weird big creature, a bug-David and a teacher-Golliath. She drinks buckets of tea, daring to add a bit of honey. Her liquid-filled stomach pulls her down on the hot floor where she lies, weeping and shamefully feeling sorry for herself. "I have no one to make a cup of tea for me, baaaah" she weeps and weeps and weeps. It helps that her friend sends messages offering to come over. It's not that bad, she thinks. "I can't expect busy people to drop everything and attend to a bit of a bug in my body", she thinks. "I know that I'll live, it's just that I'm sooooo alooooone. "
In bed by 11:00 and miraculously falls asleep and even more miraculously sleeps through the night. The next morning she wakes up feeling achey, but positively better. After a hot shower and 2 cups of strong tea (she just realizes: no coffee in 3 days!) she's almost as good as new. Walking up the stairs to her office on the 6th floor she knows that she's not quite there yet, but a world away from the wretched invalid she was yesterday (she loves using this Austenesque expression). She doesn't have to cancel her classes. Her advanced students are preparing their presentations and they are absolutely rocking. So creative. A group decides to have Disney characters debatiing as contenders for a presidency of a smal country; a pair decides to be B. Spears and C. Aguillera using a lot of good MSN gossip slang; another group creates a X-mas story in which a boy learns the hard truth about Santa... They're working, they are enthusiastic, they're having fun, they ask for a good expression for this and that... She feels well and alive again. The world turns again at its steady pace, no spinning.

She wants to do something nice. Even stars are on her side today: her friend has a birthday. She decides to organize a little get together; she decides to brave the minus temperature to find a gift in which she puts a lot of thought, she finds a perfectly-sized tiramisu cake, buys flowers from a tiny flower shop at Hansung University Subway station run by a brave handicapped lady.

Is this 'desire to celebrate life and friends brought about by what felt like a near-death experience of yesterday? By the fear of loneliness? She feels the need to have a good day with good people after a bad day with bad bugs. In another attempt to celebrate life, she blow-dries her hair and puts on a blue beret; disguises her greenish pallor with heaps of make up, even mascara 'to open up her eyes." She meets her favourite people who are amazed at her speedy recovery. She spends a great evening, admittedly eats and drinks a bit too much which -as is to be expected - upsets her stomach all over again yet not to such Biblical proportions as the day before - and keeps her up until 3:00. a.m No matter, Wednesday is her day off anyway. She had, however, promised to her canceled classes that she'd be in her office all day Wednesday , starting at 10:00, to offer assistance with presentationm, if needed. She's glad that she kept her promise 'cause they kept coming all day.

Once I read that the only time we really live in the moment is when we are in pain. Yep, and what horrible moment it is. I'd choose not to live it, ever again.