It started right away in the morning, around 6:30, when I got up and turned the fan off. But only in the middle of the shower did it start to become an issue.

It was like - to quote a TV show I saw last night - I had an elephant on my chest. Just looking thinking of food made be disgusted and breathing was a real issue. When I hurried outside after getting dressed like a lightning bolt, it seemed to help - to take off some of the load - but I couldn't stay outside. It was slightly colder than usual and besides - I had to go downstairs, get ready for school.

I was never claustrophobic before but I was starting to think I was. The world was spinning and when I lay down in that brown couch in front of the open window, so I felt the air. Abba put a blanket on me and I cuddled, feeling a little bit better by the second.

He made an appointment for 10:20.

Abba had to drive my brother Tal to school. He'd be back as soon as possible, he said. I fell asleep as he left. This was strange - a sign for illness already. I never fall asleep once I'm out of bed. If I do... It's because I'm sick. And not Oh-It's-Just-A-Cold sick. My-body-is-fighting-full-power sick.

I woke up around eight, and that's when the pains started. All around my stomach, except where I have my - monthly - pains. It wasn't that urgent though, as the need to breathe. Abba came home around 8:30, I presume, because that's how long it takes to drive to school and back - around an hour. By nine I was feeling sick - throwing up sick - too. Basically 9:30 sharp I threw up on the lovely brown couch. The pains were now just as strong as the need to breathe, perhaps stronger, and I threw up again. I don't know what - I hadn't put anything in my stomach since around 19:00 last night. Before, even.

My dad theorized it might be a panic attack, but it made no sense. What did I have to be anxious about? He said that five years ago, if it were Tal, he would've thought it was because Imma, my mother, had left last night. But I had never had a problem with her leaving. (I missed her, but I never got anxiety attacks.)

By ten I was crying occasionally. This was not what my day was supposed to look like. I was supposed to go to school, audition for that new band, enjoy drama if there was going to be a class(I had heard that he wasn't going to come, like last week) and if not, a double free period. I was going to come home from school and pay up for Red, because Abba had promised he'd get it for me, and play it over and over while I surfed the web.

I already knew by that point that day's plan was irrelevant and was NOT going to happen.

We got there early, 10:15. And we waited until 10:35. I went outside to breathe a couple times, and I cried once or twice from the pain. When we came in, I gave the exact times for each occurrence. After he checked me, he said he had bad news and good news. I asked for the bad news first.

He said he couldn't treat me.

I asked what the good news was.

He said I had the flu and it should be gone quickly.

What you don't realize is I don't get sick easily. Like, at all. But when I do, I go down hard. And with something I'd never had before.

I didn't panic. I'm not that kind of person. But I lay down under the cloudy sky and waited for Abba to get out of the store. He didn't find anything he wanted. We stopped in the grocery store on the way back, and he bought me some coke. Normal coke. The last time we did that I had a stomach virus. It helped a lot.

But not this time. When he came into my room it wasn't clean enough for him. He started cleaning up, and then started reorganizing my closet. I had come to the conclusion a long time ago that this closet did NOT have enough room for my clothes.

He brought down an extra dresser.

We moved things and came to the conclusion I needed more hanging space. All my jeans, non-sweat pants,(about a drawer each) and sweaters (which took up two drawers all by themselves. I have a lot of sweaters) went into that dresser, and we rearranged half my closet. All the while I consumed coke. But there was still much more work to be done when I threw up in the bathroom just after diarrhea. Twice each.

So around one o-clock(my dad told me this, I could not remember for the life of me) I crashed and burned and fell asleep for about five hours.

I had thrown up all the coke. I couldn't keep any of it down.

I asked my dad to buy me one of those pillows, or bottles or whatever, that you fill up with hot water. I had used one once, back in my music teacher's house, and it had been so helpful, I kept asking for it over and over and over ever since (about a year). But it did keep slipping my mind, and I hadn't nagged about it enough.

Abba went and got it for me at superfarm. About a fifteen minute drive each way and ten minutes inside. He came back with the very needed - thing - but I had already thrown up again. By 18:30 I was sound asleep again.

I woke up at eight, after a long, complicated dream in which I was naked most of the time and included a romance between a sixteen year old and some guy who was fat, in his fifties, and had a gray mustache.

I was sure it was midnight. My body felt the same way it does when I fall asleep early and wake up around the witching hour with a need to visit the loo, minus the last part. But then I heard my dad talking to Tal and saying something about closing all windows, and rain. I looked at my alarm clock and realized it was actually eight, like I said before. I called Abba over and asked him to refill the - thing - with some new hot water and to refill the cup with the coke, which I had finished the moment I woke up. When I didn't puke into the bucket by my bed again, I got up and went downstairs and asked for some tea.

Vanilla, two sugars, like always. Not the Chai Masala thing I have only when I'm sick. But my usual.

The phone rang, for the third time today, again for me. Shir was on and we talked about the auditions. She didn't actually get in and she was going to do so tomorrow (but I was not going to be at school tomorrow). So we talked about the annoying small piano they have at school and how they really need a full keyboard one, and what we were thinking of preforming etc. I was going to sing, by the way. Maybe one of my original songs, because I wanted to write - that was why I was auditioning. And I wouldn't even audition if it weren't for Shir auditioning (she said it was likewise). We talked for fifteen minutes, and she promised to talk to the audition guy about me.

I finished my tea and came upstairs. I haven't thrown up since. I started writing this basically right afterward and it is now 21:36 :D

I still am not going to school tomorrow though, and THERE'S HISTORY TOMORROW:( I love history.

אמנם באנגלית, אבל זה מה שקרה היום.

מי ייתן וזה אף פעם לא יקרה לכם.

אביגיל