The Side Effects of Antibiotics

For the past eight days, I’ve been living in what feels like a twilight zone.  I got an infection in my upper leg, which caused swelling and discomfort and had to have it attacked by strong antibiotics.  If you take these powerful pills for a week, you begin to feel hollowed out, like the wasteland of bacteria that have all been killed to fight the infection.

Nothing prepared me for this sense of hollowness, this inability to get comfortable no matter what position I sit in, almost like I am looking at my self from a third place. Nothing is what it appears, my dreams are terrifying and detailed, and intermittently, I’ll wake up in a pool of sweat–or not. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about illness, and I try to focus on the things in my life that give me pleasure.

But this ailment is zapping it all away, from being able to enjoy food –no appetite–to getting a good night’s sleep.  The strangest thing I notice throughout my long days here alone at home is how I can almost never pass by my bed without wanting to lie down in it. Even when I’m not that tired. I just want to lie down.   But I think I’ve turned the corner with this, and that when the final pill is taken, I will have slain the infection.

The timing couldn’t be better too–I’m flying to London on Sunday for a week or so at World Travel Market and then an excursion to Devon, in the South of England, and to the lively city of Bristol.

So let’s hope that all is finally better by the time I board my Norwegian Air Shuttle airplane, bound for London.