This challenge/prompt can be focused on mentally or physically. Since I have written so much about my depression I am going to go with the physical and change things up.
I was seventeen years old and at the time I had just started working at a call center. I was still in the training phase of the job.
During our lunch break one day I started getting a really bad headache and felt like I was going to throw up. My head was pounding. Now, I had a history of migraines so I chalked it off to just a bad migraine at first.
The next day the headache was beyond a normal migraine and I was feeling extremely sick to my stomach. I took my temperature and it was 100F.
I didn’t think too much of it yet, I did think something was off as the headache was not the same as a regular migraine. However, I still tried to go about as usual.
My girlfriend at the time was going to the mall with her mom and invited me. I agreed to go even though I was feeling terrible. I’ve pushed through migraines before and wanted to spend time with her.
While I was at the mall things were getting progressively worse, and I knew for sure that this was not a migraine, that something else was wrong.
The mall was located close to the office building my stepdad worked at. So I called him from a payphone, explained the headache and feeling sick, and asked him to come pick me up and take me to the hospital, which was also nearby.
He told me that if I was feeling that sick, I should be at home resting, not out at the mall, and to go home and go to bed.
The next day the pain in my head had increased and I was throwing up even from just taking a drink of water. I checked my temperature and it had gone up to 104F.
I called my stepdad and told him. We got an appt to see the dr that day and went into his office. Due to my history of migraines, the doctor just prescribed me a medication for migraines and sent me home.
The medication did nothing for the pain and I was still throwing up. The following day my temperature had increased to 105F. The doctor had me come into his office immediately and asked some questions and did some examination.
His office building was connected to the hospital and he sent me down to the emergency department. No one would say why.
When I got there, they wanted to draw blood before doing anything, but since I couldn’t keep any liquids down I was so dehydrated that they couldn’t get a vein to take a blood sample.
They also wouldn’t give me anything to drink until they got the blood sample. That was frustrating.
They finally got the blood sample. We waited for a short period of time and the doctor returned and told us that they needed to do a spinal tap. They still wouldn’t tell me what they thought was wrong.
They did the spinal tap and while waiting for the cultivated results, had me transferred to the sick kid's hospital.
After the spinal tap, I started feeling quite a bit better and was even able to have some cheese and crackers with some water in the ambulance on the way to the sick kid's hospital.
Shortly after getting there, however, the headache and nausea started returning. The next thing I knew they put up a biohazard sign on the door to my room. The doctors and nurses who came in were outfitted in biohazard suits.
At this point, I was in too much pain to worry about what that meant.
Finally, I was given some answers. Somehow I had Spinal Meningitis. They had examined me for bug bites, but could not find any. I wasn’t living in a dormitory or in a similar place where a large gathering of people living together these things can often be found.
They had no answers as to how I got the Spinal Meningitis. There were no reports of anyone else having it in the area I lived or worked.
For about two weeks I was on a morphine pump with a timed release button. I just laid there pressing the button constantly as it didn’t do much for the pain. I couldn’t eat or drink anything without throwing up.
They did have a freezer in the room with popsicles and sometimes I could have one without throwing up.
It was the most painful physical sickness I have ever experienced. They did a second spinal tap towards the end of the two weeks to make sure that it was leaving my system and no longer contagious.
Let me tell you, even pumped full of morphine, those spinal taps hurt like a son of a biscuit.
So, that is the story of the sickest I have been physically.
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