Two weeks ago I was laying on my hotel bed in North Conway, New Hampshire, having just finished two days of ice climbing in the White Mountains.
Two weeks ago seems like ancient history.
It all started on a Friday night. I returned to my room around 4:30 p.m. feeling dead tired. Like I had just been in a fight -- one that I didn't win. I figured my exhaustion was due to two days of hard climbing and that the best cure would be a good night's sleep. Plus I had only five days before setting off on my three-month tour of the South Pacific and Asia and there was much preparation to do. I needed my rest.
Unfortunately I did not get much, waking around midnight with a terrible headache. "Did I fall and hit my head?" I didn't remember hitting my head. "Maybe I have a concussion? Is that possible?"
My night was spent tossing and turning, replaying every slip of my ice axes and crampons trying to figure out if and when I smacked my head off the ice. Or could falling ice be the culprit? At 6:00 a.m., having not fallen back asleep, I dragged myself out of bed and set off for the three-hour drive back to Boston to catch my flight to Toronto.
Like my sleep the drive did not go well. My head felt fuzzy and tired, though I convinced myself this was only a result of lack of sleep. I'd sleep it off when I got home for sure.
Only that I didn't. I woke Sunday morning with the same headache, which, now, was accompanied by general miserableness. It was then that I had perhaps the greatest idea of my life: I determined that I was feeling terrible because I'd been sitting around for a day and half doing nothing; what I needed was a little exercise. So I decided to go rock climbing!
My decision did not have its desired effect and my splitting headache turned into a paralyzing one. (For those who judge, hindsight is 20/20!) At 11:30 p.m. I set off for the ER and spent the night in the hospital. At 5:30 a.m. the ER doc came into my room and said I was free to go: "Sir," he said, "you have a concussion. Take some Tylenol." So I went home to bed.
But I woke with a rash spreading from my spine, around my left side, onto my chest. Shingles?! Then my brilliant medical insight: "This is not a concussion!" So I put my limited googling skills to work to determine the true source of my "sickness" (as certain friends have come to affectionately describe my dispair). "Do I have meningitis?" Thinking as much I made a beeline for the hospital where my self-diagnosis was confirmed by a lumbar puncture (which, by the way, is as pleasant as it sounds): I had viral meningitis.
I spent the next two weeks on the mend -- the first in the hospital and the second at home self-administering IV treatment three-times per day. I'm feeling much better now and hoping to resume my travels on Thursday when I'm scheduled to depart for a three-week stay in New Zealand. Thanks to all for the well wishes and especially to those who put up with my whining over the past two weeks. Hopefully my next blog post will be about cool Kiwi ascents and swimming with dolphins.