When all your luck's run out on you

Last Monday morning, a quarterly meeting where I'm the presenter was scheduled for 9:00 AM.  My company is spread throughout several buildings in Boston and this meeting was going to be held in the building next to South Station, which was awesome for me because it meant that I didn't have to commute back and forth between buildings during the day.  I could simply hang out in the lobby and eat some breakfast before the meeting and then head to my office for the rest of the day at 10:00.        
Thursday night, I ran for the first time in over two months.  I ran again (only 1 mile) on Saturday and added some free weights (sounds so '80s) and ab work into the mix.  On Sunday, instead of feeling like I was on the road to kicking some ass, I felt so completely sore and wiped out.  I was exhausted and couldn't wait to go to bed that night.  Rich and I went to bed early but despite being tired, I did not sleep well.  I would wake up every half hour even though it felt like I had been asleep for hours and I just felt off.  And then all of a sudden, I was feverish and my heart felt like it was racing.

I've been presenting at this meeting for two years now and while I may feel a little nervous beforehand, it's what I would describe as a "work nervous."  In other words, not a big deal.  Overnight, I became irrationally angry at myself because I thought I was getting worked up over this meeting.  When 6:00 rolled around, I begrudgingly climbed out of bed, showered and dressed for work.  It was not going well.  I felt sick but I couldn't exactly pinpoint what was wrong.

Rich dropped me off for the train and it was all I could do to keep myself from gagging.  But I had that meeting!  And I had the printed handouts in my bag!  In the ten minutes it takes for my train to reach the next station stop, I thought of all the times I had suffered through train rides while not feeling well and that at some point, my luck was going to run out.  I had made a terrible mistake.

As the train pulled into the next stop, I called Rich.  Please answer.  Please answer.  He picked up on the last ring.  "Hon, if I get off here, can you pick me up?  I can't do it.  I need to get off the train."

So it took a few days to figure out what was going on but it turns out that I had the flu.  People were dropping like flies last week and in some cases, it didn't matter if you had the flu shot or not.  There's a slew of nasty stuff going around.

I'm still not back to normal.  I'm weak and everything seems to take such great effort.  All I want to do is sleep.  My appetite hasn't returned and I have to watch what I eat because my stomach decided to join in on the fun.  After being out of work for three days, I drove into Boston on Thursday morning to pick up my laptop so I could do some work from home.  It took me two hours to shower and dress that morning because I had to take so many breaks.  Miraculously it was just under an hour door to door for that commute, which is less time than my normal train commute.  Driving in that morning really opened my eyes as to how taxing my commute is.  

I have no idea how I'm going to make it through a normal workweek.  I was already behind at work so right about now, I'm screwed.  It's not worth obsessing over (there's only so much I can do) so I'm trying to not think more than 12 hours in advance.  Right now, we're waiting for this snowstorm to hit.      

Happy first day of spring!  (I think.)