Acute Gastritis...

Tuesday. Was, erm, 'suddenly ill' in the wee hours of 2008. Work still busy, but getting quieter. Throat worse than previous day.

Wednesday. Lots of bookings from UK tour reps. Throat slightly better.

Thursday:

zzt-zzt. zzt-zzt. zzt-zzt. zzt-zzt.

"Hello?"

"Hi Colin, it's Kate"

"What time is it?"

"It's 8:30"

"Ooooooh s**t. I'm coming..."

"Okay..."

What this means is that I've over-slept my alarm. By 2 hours.

So I rush into my uniform, grab shaver, comb, toothbrush etc and scramble into the gondola. While willing it to go faster, I freshen up for work, and arrive down at the base to push through the QUEUE OF CUSTOMERS (oops...), and get to work on the computer trying to serve them. I'm trying my best to talk normally, but my vocal cords feel like they'd melted, and I sound an octave lower. And to cap it all off, my throat is worse than ever. But the customers still got served, and the queue still dwindled into nothing, and I was still able to have something to eat. And, for the moment, I still have my job.

Friday morning. Now, that was a completely different aquatic vertebrate-filled boiling vessel.

I awoke in the very early hours (2:22, funnily enough), for no immediately apparent reason. 30 seconds later, I realised why, as I 'drove the porcelin bus' while struggling to come up for air.

By 5:30, I was wide awake and still feeling pretty ill. I found that my throat was the cause of most of my problems, since it was very difficult to swallow, and hurting a lot. The nausea wasn't too bad, but somethimes it would really flare up. At this point, I decided there was no way I'd be working today, and that my priority should be getting to Banff and seeing a Doctor.

3 hours later, I was in Banff seeing a Doctor, while clutching my handy Tupperware. And after some prodding and looking-down-my-oesophagus, I was declared as having acute Gastritis, and told to get my medicine and go back to bed.

2 hours later, I had got my medicine and gone to bed. But not before standing around in the gondola queue on one of the busier days of the New Year, feeling utterly miserable, then puking in front of everyone.

So the rest of my day was spent semi-conscious either in bed or on the sofa in the common room, with my Tupperware nearby, slowly drinking some fruit juice (yay, vitamin C!). I'd been perscribed a gargle solution to help with my throat, but I had to take anti-nausea tablets before I could put that stuff in my mouth. And within 5 minutes of putting said stuff in said mouth, that mouth had no feeling in it what so ever. Rather interesting effect... But it worked, and slowly, I improved.

I went to bed at 7:00, and got up again at 7:00. Total time spent asleep (since 5:30), 15 hours. Total amount eaten, most of a sandwich (peanut butter), and one chocolate coin (10 euro cents). Total number of people grossed out, mostly in gondola queue, ~400. But hey, eveyone gets to be ill every now and again. Who wants a go next?