I became ill a few days ago, with symptoms appearing on and off since. When I went to bed early this morning (recovering from a night shift schedule), I thought I had turned a corner; however, when I awoke later this morning, I was disturbed to find a new symptom on my forehead.
You see, my first symptom happened at work on Thursday night; I was dead tired within an hour of starting work despite sleeping well that day. The second symptom didn’t take long to follow: I didn’t become insanely hungry after four hours as usual. In fact, we had a meeting during my usual break time, so I didn’t get to break until a full five hours after my previous meal—my body is usually in panic mode by this point. Nevertheless, I ate at break because I knew it would be another four hours before I got the opportunity again. I didn’t have any stomach issues at this point, but by the time second break rolled around, I was freezing my ass off (another sign that things weren’t right—running around with parachute material on as I do means too much heat). For second break I donned my fleece jacket and drank as much water as I could. At this point my stomach was flatly refusing food and was only taking water under duress.
When I got home my apparent fever had mostly broken; my temperature was only 1-2 degrees above normal. I slept nearly eight hours, only waking up once, but I had a feeling of intestinal malaise and I still was not hungry. I called in sick and took it easy for the evening. By the time I went to bed I was actually feeling sort of OK. When I awoke the next afternoon, I was actually even considering going to work. I had some toast and then Karrie took off to bring a friend home and go grocery shopping. When Leah awoke, however, things changed: as I had to be upright and walk around more, my ill feeling returned. I called in sick again. My ill feeling stayed until late in the evening when I was suddenly hungry again. Yay! Food!
I started easy with toast and an apple. Not long after, soup and crackers followed. I kept up with water as I worked through some computer issues until I went to bed, tired but feeling OK. This time, when I woke up, I felt ill again, and my appetite had left again. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Not long after I was up, I was washing my hands in the bathroom and noticed two blotchy spots on my forehead. I nearly went hypochondriac as I ran over to Karrie and asked her what the hell they were. She didn’t know, so I was immediately thinking doctor since I clearly had some sort of exotic disease. I went back to the mirror and contemplated the splotches some more.
I felt them; they were not rashes. I rubbed them; they did not hurt. As I rubbed, I briefly thought, was I rubbing my head in frustration in front of the computer? Then it hit me: these were hickeys. The trim rings for the recessed lighting I installed in my new office came with suction cups to assist in installing the lamps. One of these made it up to my temporary desk as suction cups are very handy in disassembling iPhones for cleaning (or, say, screen replacement—ask my wife). When one of the hard drives in my computer started throwing SMART errors (indicating that it would fail soon), I nervously started playing with the suction cup on my forehead as I went about going through the warranty replacement process. I distinctly remember at one point tugging on the cup as it as affixed to my forehead, wondering if the negative pressure it induced inside my skull might help alleviate the migraines I’m known to have from time to time.
I can’t say whether the suction cup to the forehead is an effective migraine mitigator, but I can now tell you from experience, it can give you hickeys.
