Tag: flu

  • 24 Hours of Ups & Downs

    Well, just a quick update about the last 24 hours. It’s a perfect display of bad and good things coming hand in hand, as they should. 🙂

    Most importantly is probably having more or less sealed the deal with our landlord. He will put in some extra furniture, provide more cutlery, some bowls and some other stuff. Besides that, he will get the window I broke repaired… I don’t have to pay for it. What a load off my shoulders. 🙂

    After that I went to eat somewhere with my flatmate Daniele, from Italy. We headed over to a particular place where I knew they offered vegetarian dürüm. They recognized me and the theory I called ‘The Vegetarian Sandwich‘ seems to be true. I noticed before that upon returning to the same place a few times, they give you more and more for the same price. Here was no different. We ordered food for about 18.50 lira (about 10 euros). When we went to pay they charged us just 15. A nice surprise, so we paid and I figured we got our drinks for free. As we were standing outside, somewhere down the road, one of the guys from the kebab place ran towards us. I figured they had realized their mistake. They had… He gave me back another 1.50, so in total we only paid 13.50 and thus got 5 lira off… That’s more than a quarter of the price. Awesome. I don’t care so much about the money… It’s just great that they show your appreciation for coming back. You’re not just customer #2739.

    Then we went to a house party… When returning home it was quite cold outside. Still being a little sick, my body didn’t enjoy it (understatement) and my stomach started rebelling quite seriously. We got a taxi, because I needed to be warm and home as fast as possible. Now I’m quite sure that I actually have some flu or viral infection related to either my stomach, or more likely, intestines. Even though physically I feel worse, mentally I feel slightly more comfortable since this is something I had before in Spain (5 or 6 years ago). I was lying on the beach as it was getting cold and windy and contracted this flu. It kept me inside my holiday apartment the whole week, never more than 20 metres away from the toilet. This is a bit different, but last night was a good wake up call that I should take it really easy this weekend. It also stopped me from being so stubborn and listen to my girlfriend’s advice of what to eat and what not to eat. 😉

    I think I’ll go to the infirmary this Monday, which is on-campus… If that’s the appropriate place to go. I just need antibiotics I suppose. But this weekend is for resting and taking it easy. No parties. I need to travel next week.

    So a typical Istanbul day for me… filled with ups and downs 😉 I’m so looking forward to get rid of this sickness though… It has been holding me back since I got here (yes, I’ve had it for about 3 weeks now – sometimes almost absent, but now very present). I don’t have a picture to go with this post, but imagine how you’d feel after drinking the juice in the picture below and you’ll know (more or less) how I’m feeling right now 😉

  • The Flu

    As you might have noticed from my Tweets, I have the flu. I’m going to try to be as coherent as possible in this post. It’s not so bad anymore, but it’s still a bit hard to structure my thoughts.

    It began a few days ago on Wednesday, with some coughs and feeling a bit ‘tired’. I figured it was probably because I’d been procrastinating too much, which is a state-killer, but I was wrong. When I went to bed, I started getting fever, the chills, but at the same time feeling very hot. I was balancing between sleeping and being awake, dreaming and hallucinating, sober and flu-drunk. Ugh.

    The fun thing about this flu though, is that every day there’s a different symptom. The first day, starting with the night, it was just fever and headache mainly, accompanied by muscle aches throughout my whole body. Everywhere imaginable (unless you have a sick imagination). I didn’t want to leave my room, let alone the house to go to the supermarket… because that would have been a great challenge. The interesting thing was though, that when you’re ill you’re supposed to feel shitty, right? I did feel physically shitty (elephant shitty), but mentally I was very at peace. It was easier to be at peace than normally. I guess my thoughts got so incoherent that I didn’t really bother with listening to them anymore. Quite relaxing, as you can imagine if you know me well.

    So the next day, it got rather different. More coughing, fever was down a lot (though at times it came back, but not so bad as the day before), but there was a new ingredient to my flu! My body was aching. A very weird type of ache at that. It was all over my torso and not as deep as the muscle aches but it felt like my skin was hurting, or just below the skin. About one and a half year ago I fell down some stairs that had a rug on there, and as I slid down the stairs it tore open my back (Woohoo! Stairslide!). The days after, it hurt to wear a shirt, because even though it was touching the wounds just lightly, it was tingly and prickly. Such a baby, aren’t I? Anyway, this time was the same, except I had no wounds. So that was quite the sensation as you can imagine. This feeling started yesterday and still hasn’t faded by the way. Oh and in the evening I got Bouwe over to have dinner (I was in no state to cook myself) and I remarked that I looked rather healthy. He agreed, but then went on to mention the black rings below my eyes which I hadn’t noticed before. At least they were not as bad as this guy’s:

    Wim Kok.

    Then last night I was sleeping, dreaming a little… and suddenly I wake up with a shock. The first thing that goes through my head is “no DJ Tiësto!” This had absolutely no connection to my dream by the way. It also didn’t have a connection to my phone vibrating and hoping that it’s not DJ Tiësto who was calling me. It was completely random, like “Rosebud” or whatever your last words might be. And that scared me a bit… I don’t mind dying at some point, but I don’t want my last words or thoughts to be something as retarded as “no DJ Tiësto!” I got hit by a car before and they say your life flashes by in front of you in these situations… Well, it didn’t. My mind was very clear. The single thought going through my head was “shit!” Then I woke up on the road.
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    So today it’s sore throat day. Some flu symptoms are still present but very manageable. I’m going to the supermarket today (by myself, hell yeah), do some school work, plus if I’m a nice boy and do all my chores I’ll treat myself to some baklava. Wooh. Sugar overdosing is fun!
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    So yeah, to all friends and family reading this: don’t worry, I’m doing ok again. No, I will not go to the doctor. Yes, I am eating healthy. Thanks for your concern. Have a nice weekend!
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