What I Did AFTER My Hawaii Vacation

Consider this a prequel to my upcoming Hawaii Vacation Post.

I still need to download some of the pictures off my phone for our Hawaii trip last week -- we had a great time and I had the best of intentions of updating the blog as soon as I got home, but an evil force had other plans....

(Did you ever notice that the scrolling text at the beginning of each Star Wars movie had four periods -- I mean, the dialogue written by Lucas was nothing compared to Serenity but come on, TYPOS? Bah. Lucas jumped the shark with SW:TESB)

After landing in Dallas, rousting the family back to Nanny's house in Irving, picking up the dog and repacking the car for the 145 mile drive home on Saturday morning, I just didn't feel right. Then I got really, really cold, which worried me. The first part of me to go offline when I get sick is the old hypothalamus, and I can't get or stay warm. (Cue creepy music).

Then, it hit me.

I don't want to veer any farther into TMI territory here, but suffice it to say that my abdomen began making noises approximately the same volume, duration and pitch of a humpback whale during mating season. In a dramatic twist, all of my intellect, drive and initiative has been focused for the past 72 hours down to a single, unitary imperative:

Avoiding the shart.

This has, understandably, interfered with work to a considerable degree. Had I been hanging out with the boys in my son's second-grade class, the gales of flatulence that followed the roaring in the belly would have earned me tons of 'Funny Dad' cred. In reality, each event has been approached with the care, planning and forethought of a bomb disposal tech hovering over a ticking backpack nuke. That and I felt like a dishrag, my only diet consisting of the recommended banannas, rice and toast, washed down with Gatorade for rehydration and electrolyte balance. All to no avail. I treated myself conservatively, expecting this to be a viral GI infection, but apparently the bug had other plans.

I have no idea how I got sick, the fact that three full days have gone by without any respite led me to seek professional help, in the form of Perry Lewis, Gastroenterologist Extraordinare. Whatever the unwanted inhabitants of my GI tract, thanks to Perry they'll be having 500mg of Levaquin and 1500mg of Flagyl to contend with each day for the next week, the oral antibiotic equivalent of WMD. Take that, haha! Perry's thought was that it could be giardia (a parasite), a nasty variant of E. Coli, or possibly salmonella, but he figured we'd just use the old Defender 'Smart Bomb' approach and kill everything on the threat screen. I'm cool with that, unless I get antibiotic-associated colitis. We'll burn that bridge when we get there.

I already feel better after the first dose, and there may just be a silver (literally) lining to this story in that my multiple trips to the loo have allowed me to finish a whole issue of Fortune while at work, so if I can process that information into a good stock purchase or two I could get a large financial reward for my unwanted downtime. I'm sorry to inflict this on you gentle readers, but hey, it's significant to me so I'm going to tell you about it.

And there are some pictures you'd rather read a thousand words to avoid.