sure-fire method to cut back on driving

so yesterday morning, i woke up with a uti. this may be A Lot Of Information for some of you, but honestly it's not that big of a deal... it happens every once in a while. welcome to being a girl.

i also woke up with a REALLY sore throat, but figured it was probably allergy related or something and more or less ignored it. except for every time i tried to swallow, which resulted in excruciating pain, but whatever.

so i made an appointment that morning to see a doctor about the uti, and once i got there, asked him if he could take a quick peek down the ol' throat just in case it was a sudden-onset raging case of strep or something, ha ha, it's probably nothing though, ha ha.

"sure!" he said, and got the little light stick thingie. "say ahh," he said. "ahhhhhh," i said. "....OHHH," he said.

can i just tell you, from vast personal experience, that's NOT usually something you want a doctor to utter? it's not usually good.

turns out i have some weird and disgusting infection of one tonsil, but good news! penicillin knocks that sucker right out. so off i trotted to the pharmacy to get my antibiotic, to cure all the various infections my body was currently hosting.

about three hours later, i reeeally wasn't feeling so hot. i started getting chills at my desk, and felt just overall pretty crapariffic. i decided to drive home and finish working there. or possibly go straight to bed. it was a toss up.

forty-five minutes later, i'm about half a mile from my house, and just about every symptom possible hits me all at once. first i think i'm going to vomit; then i start sweating profusely. my vision starts to swim. i have a Very Very Pressing urge to lay down, rightnownoseriouslyRIGHTNOW. only problem is that i'm DRIVING. and in the left lane of two lanes of traffic, because i have a left turn coming up to get onto my road, so i can't pull over onto the shoulder right away, and i am quickly realizing i have about 15 seconds, max, before i pass out. my vision proceeds from swimming to fading. there's a break in the grass median ahead of me leading into a school parking lot, and i try desperately to focus my vision enough to get through the median and not get hit by any oncoming cars.

i get into the parking lot and yank up the parking brake, turn the a/c on as high as it will go, and get my seat jerked all the way back just before my vision goes completely black. i did actually remain technically conscious the entire time - i could hear the songs changing on the radio for the next few minutes - but i laid there immobile, drenched in sweat, breathing shallowly, with no vision. it probably lasted about five minutes before i could feel my breath start to get a little more normal, and my eyes came back into focus.

in some small part of my brain that wasn't freaking out about the fact that i'd nearly lost consciousness while driving, i was desperately hoping that a cop didn't pull up next to me - i was very illegally stopped in a not-very-safe spot, 10 feet off the road in an active school parking lot - because i was sure he wouldn't let me drive the rest of the way back to my house once i'd recovered, and all i wanted was my bed. i don't think i can't adequately explain how MUCH i wanted to be at my house at that point. especially because i was within easy walking distance of my place by that point, but it was so fundamentally inaccessible at the moment.

after about 5 minutes of that half-passed out state, and another 5 minutes recovering, i put the car back into gear and got my ass home, thankful the entire time that i was so close (seriously, like 2 blocks) because if it had been any further, i would have been far too scared that i'd have another Episode before i could make it home.

i'm feeling MUCH better today, incidentally. my fever broke in the evening, and i stayed in bed from 5p last night until 10:30 this morning. i'm a little nervous to go on any long drives today - or, uh, get in my car at all - but overall i can tell the antibiotic has kicked in, and i am fever-free. i'd just like to request that my body limit itself to ONE infection at a time from here on out, since two at a time appears to be where i go from "inconvenienced" to "body shuts down." doesn't seem too much to ask, right?