I knew before it was October that this would be an eventful month, but I failed to fully plan for the extent to which October 2021 will be etched into my memory for some time. I’m going to skip my travel recap for the time being, and maybe post again next week before I depart for San Diego & Vegas, because this past week has truly been an experience in extremes.

I didn’t feel so hot last Saturday. I’ve always had a bit of a finnicky stomach; it’s better now than it has been in years past, and is typically happier with less food, and fewer meals. I chalked it up to whatever, adjusting back to AK, stress, who knows what. I rallied, and on Saturday night we had a big dinner with another friend. Honestly, after a few glasses of wine, I was feelin’ aight.

I spent Sunday in bed. I managed to have some dinner. I sweat and shook through the night. I spent Monday in bed, getting up only for my final interview. Later on Monday, I was offered a promotion to a position in Denver, finally. I accepted, and went back to bed.

Later on Monday, I told my roommate he might need to take me to the ER in the morning. Lying in bed, again sweating through all of my clothes and sheets, I decided going to the ER was not an option; all of our hospitals are on rationed care, and I couldn’t wait a whole day for help and risk getting COVID on top of whatever else was wrong with me. I’m one of those people who isn’t going to go to the hospital until I’m about to die, so this was pretty bad. I was fading in and out of consciousness. I was sleeping with my heart beating at 120bpm. Not good. I was in horrible, mind bending pain I had never experienced before.

At 8am I called the clinic down the street where I go for primary care and begged them to let me come in immediately. They said yes. I was there for four hours, and they were amazing… they ran all kinds of tests and CT’d my abdomen. Went home, went back to bed. Doctor called a few hours later and told me I saved my own ass bringing myself in for help: I had a severe salmonella infection, and concurrent overgrown e.coli (everyone has e. coli, but some strains are bad, and a malfunctioning biome can cause a harmless strain to overgrow and become harmful, apparently). Seeing as I don’t eat out of dumpsters, or dine on shit sandwiches, I’m kind of stumped as to how this happened. People I’ve shared this with tend to blame Mexico, but I’ve been to Mexico a bazillion times and I’ve never gotten sick, so I doubt it. You know what? I really don’t even care. The level of pain I have been in destroyed any curiosity I might’ve had over where I acquired this. I’ve never been this acutely ill in my life, and I’ve been pretty fucking sick a few times. I leveled up this time around.

My pharmacy’s incompetence caused me to wait a further 6 hours for the antibiotics, antiemetics and other unpleasant medications I needed to turn this ship around. For me, there are two parts to this nightmare, because antibiotics make me hurl, so it’s been a tenuous few days trying to keep them in my stomach and balance that with the rest of the symptoms. I am slowly starting to feel better, and I am surprised by how long any improvement has taken: given that I began a high dose of Cipro on Tuesday evening and it’s Friday, I figured I’d have bounced back by now… I figured wrong. I am still in a lot of pain, I can’t walk fast, and I can’t eat much beyond plain soup and cereal. I think it will take some time (weeks, at least) to fully heal from this.

I’m eternally grateful that for the first time in what feels like forever, timing worked in my favor: my roommate was home this week. I’m not sure what I would have done without him, considering that I spent days unable to even walk down the stairs. He has been wonderful (and is always wonderful).

Now, at the end of the week, and rejoining the work world (I took the entire week off, which makes me sad for my team, which will be informed of my impending departure on Monday morning), I am starting to wrap my head around the many, many moving parts that will comprise my move out of Alaska and into Denver. Thankfully, I have three months, and I don’t plan to show up until January.

The extent to which I will be forcing myself to adjust is difficult to comprehend, but I’ve had all year to consider these things. It came up in my final interview: that I needed to be sure I wanted to give up the level of freedom I have in my life now, and the level of control I have over my own life, to work in an office part-time, manage a team (of mostly brand new people), to live in a city again. It will be interesting for sure. My new boss is convinced I will think Denver is a crowded shit-hole and regret leaving Alaska, which is entirely possible. I told him I’ll figure it out. I’m holding onto my house up here and it’s a direct flight away… I’m not worried. Time for a change.

More on all of this in the weeks to come. Despite this unfortunate salmonella episode, I am so fucking stoked I managed to make this happen for myself, and to secure myself an all expenses paid ticket out of here and a promotion with a hefty raise. Fuck yes.