For the first time in several weeks, I feel human again. That’s not to say I feel great, but I feel acceptable and like it is not unreasonable to be walking around. Since I first fell ill in a hotel room, I’ve been listless the whole time and at points sneezing and/or coughing constantly. Even though I’m still coughing now and then, for the first time since the onset I would say that I feel well. Sleeping an extra 5 or 6 hours each weekend day probably had a lot to do with that. The only good part of being sick was that I got to spend a lot of extra time under a blanket with a dog cuddled up on my feet and legs.
While I was ill I inadvertently stopped drinking coffee. At first, my stomach was too unsettled to drink it but after a week or so I found that I just wasn’t jonesing for it. Since that had happened more or less on its own, I decided to deliberately stop drinking soft drinks as well. For about a week now the only beverage I’ve had is water. At work, at home, in restaurants I’m only having water. One of the things this does is drop the fairly high load of artificial sweeteners I consumed to almost nothing. At my high point, I was consuming 6-8 cans of Diet Coke every day. It was my default beverage whenever I felt thirsty. I had already dropped that to a more reasonable 1-2 cans a day and now I’m all the way down to zero. I’m curious to see if this has any affect on my overall health picture in the long term.
For right now, I’m happy to just not feel miserable. Everything I touch is somewhat neglected. It’s time to get cranking on the things that have been backing up while I was under the weather. I’m behind in pretty much everything. I celebrate my return to the normal world.
Welcome back Dave.
A few years ago, I dropped soda completely as well. Same story, fell ill and felt too sick to drink it.
Ironically, as I write this in your comments field, I’m looking at a banner ad for Diet Pepsi Max.
That adsense, it’s a harsh mistress. The sodas weren’t because I felt sick, they were actually settling my stomach at the early points. It just seemed like the thing to do when I had been drinking only water for so long to keep at it and thus far I have.
Good luck giving up caffeine! I do it once a year for a couple of months, and I’m amazed at the fact that I can still get up and do what had previously required lots of coffee to accomplish.
Did you get a flu shot this year? Or was this just a nasty cold? Bruce recently got over a coughing/sneezing/icky bout with a cold. I got terribly germophobic. “Did you touch this towel? Did you use this cup?” It seems mean but I didn’t get anything either.
Anyway, glad you’re feeling better.
About 15 years ago I read the most interesting and informative article in the Sunday news magazine about why water is sooo important to one’s health. I’ve wished a hundred times that I had kept that article. It even explained what happens at the cellular level. Coke doesn’t do what plain old H2O does. It converted me, so when someone says to drink lots of water, I tell them I did it before it became vogue and cost a dollar a bottle.