134!!!

But that SO doesn't really count, because I've been sick and unable to eat anything for the past three days. Saturday night Charles and I went out for sushi and I was feeling a little off (had been all day) so I only ate the bowl of miso soup and three pieces of sushi. THAT should have told me how sick I was! Normally I can put away 30 pieces and still be looking for more! Then Saturday night I woke up in the middle of the night shaking uncontrollably. I was SO cold, but I could tell I was actually running a fever. So I spent all of Sunday in bed (missed Sarah's birthday dinner, which I guess is a good thing because with those food choices, I would have completely overindulged), alternating between cold shakes and sweating like....I dunno....something that sweats a lot. When I finally thought to check my temperature it was 103.1 So at that point I call out of school for the next day and decided to go to the doctor (how high does a temperature have to be before you decide to go to the hospital?) So I ate absolutely NOTHING on Sunday. Not a bite. I had about three glasses of orange juice, and a whole lot of water, but that's it. I was only conscious for about 2 hours the entire day.

So Monday I went to the doctor who asked what I was there for, and I said "I think I have strep throat." So they did the throat culture, and the doctor came back in and said "negative for strep, here let me shove this REALLY long q-tip up your nose, probe around your frontal lobe for a little while, while snot runs down your face, and we'll call it a flu test!" Or something like that. Then a little while later a guy comes in (lab technician, perhaps?) carrying a very scary looking bin of needles and vials and such and I asked him how the flu test went and he said "oh, it was negative. But your strep test was positive." huh? So he drew blood (to check my white cell count, but I never heard back about that) and then a million years later (after I had fallen asleep on the stretcher in the room) the doctor came back in and said "your strep result changed!" and gave me a prescription for amoxicillin and this stuff called Lidocaine Viscous which is supposed to be for the pain in my throat, and I'm supposed to gargle with it for one minute, but as you can probably tell by the "viscous" part of things, it's roughly the same consistency as snot, and VERY hard to gargle with--and I'm bad at gargling anyway! My gag reflex is too quick. So I manage to toss (ooze) it to the back of my throat and go "argh" and then I choke and swallow it. And it's done NOTHING for the pain. She also gave me some 8000mg Motrin, or something along those lines, to bring down the fever, but I wasn't allowed to take them on an empty stomach, so I went home and opened a can of chicken soup and heated up half a bowl of it, of which I managed to choke down just the broth and about two noodles (this was the thick and chunky variety of chicken soup--NOT what you want when you're sick) and that was it for food intake yesterday. Amy's chicken tetrazini smelled really good, though!

So today I went downstairs and drained off the rest of the broth from the soup leftover from yesterday (which Amy very kindly covered and put away for me), and ate that. And that's all the food I've had for the past three and a half days. My fever is down a bit today (hovering around 100) but my throat is still so sore it hurts to swallow. I was telling Mom earlier that I keep catching myself drooling to avoid having to swallow. Not very pretty. Now I have to decide whether or not I'm going to school tomorrow. Technically I am no longer contagious, since I've been on the antibiotics for 24 hours, but since I'm still running a fever and having a hard time talking, let alone swallowing, I can't decide. I think I'll try to go in, and leave early if I have to. I'm definitely canceling choir after school. I wish I could keep this weight. I know it will pop right back up as soon as I start eating again, but wouldn't this be nice?!