I got sick a couple days before last Halloween - before that I hadn't been sick for 20 years. I'm guessing it was noro since EVERYBODY around me got it as well, but I don't know for sure. It was weird for me because I felt fine all evening then starting feeling "weird" maybe 8 or 9pm...I couldn't tell if I was hungry and wanted more soup or not, but something stopped me. I went to bed feeling a little odd and then woke up around midnight feeling awful.

Since I hadn't been sick in so long, I didn't really know what nausea felt like - I've felt seasick on boats, but this didn't really feel like that. I just felt a weird tightness in my stomach area and a lot of panic/anxiety. Since this is actually not at all uncommon for me (and because it was Sunday night when it's not unusual for me to feel panicky about going back to work in the morning), I was like oh whatever, I feel weird but it's probably just anxiety and I just wish I could go to sleep. I remember trying to think of food and while it didn't seem appealing it also didn't make me feel worse, if that makes sense.

The main difference I noticed was that I couldn't look at any screens. I can't even really describe it - but when I tried to make a panic post, or play games/surf the web to calm down I couldn't look at my phone or computer for more than a minute without feeling like I needed to close it immediately (since then I've used this as a test of whether it's anxiety or sickness haha). I also felt MUCH worse every time I moved/turned - the only position that made me feel okay was almost sitting up - laying on my side made me feel extremely bad (usually if I'm having indigestion or gas laying on my left side is noticeably more comfortable). Rubbing/massaging my abdomen did not make me feel better, only worse (it tends to help with gas/anxiety-related things).

WARNING: GRAPHIC AHEAD

At some point, around 3am, it got much worse - I kept feeling like I needed to burp but could feel stuff coming up when I tried to, and then I had some instinct that I just needed to sit up and it was going to happen. I was hot and I could feel stuff rising in my throat even though I kept trying to swallow it. I tried to breathe and tell myself to just let go, but turns out that didn't really work and when it finally came I (GROSS) swallowed most of it back instinctually. This gave me an EXTREMELY sore throat for about 10 minutes and I didn't actually feel better, so I went to sit by the toilet for like another 2 hours, feeling convinced it was going to happen again. It didn't (I felt really nauseous, but I never felt that "rise" again) and the whole next day I felt like I'd been run over by a car - horrendous body aches, chills and hot flashes.

At this point I still felt low-key nauseous, and the thought/look/smell of food made me feel worse. After that came the pounding headache, then the dizziness/weakness/fatigue. I didn't feel truly better till about the next Friday, and this all happened early Monday morning. I think part of that might be that I let myself get dehydrated somehow (even though I didn't have diarrhea nor did I actually even really throw up all the way...)

Anyway, I only wrote all this out because I think I would have found this useful to read before I got sick. The week I was sick I felt like my emet was 1000x worse, that I could never have imagined feeling so horrible or that getting a sv would be so horrible. But after that I feel like it's decreased so much in terms of the anticipatory fear - I still FREAK out if I feel sick, or if someone near me is, but I'm not constantly thinking about it when I'm at work or at the store, etc. In that way I guess I'm grateful - I just hope I don't have to get it again anytime soon!