Sigh…

I have giardia. My stomach’s been upset for a couple weeks now, and not in a way I’ve experienced before. Nothing too severe, just upset stomach, stomach pain, nausea, and worst of all, lack of appetite. As anyone who’s ever spent more than three hours with me knows, I don’t do well without food. In regular, tasty intervals. I have lost weight, which is nice, except I’ve been so weak at times I find myself leaning on things when I’m standing up. It’s the first time in my life when food has not been at all appealing for over 2 weeks, and I’m not enjoying it any.

I finally went to the doctor because it didn’t seem to be improving, and I’d started to get suspicious that it might be giardia, a parasitic nasty little organism guy that you can get from from swimming in the lake or drinking some questionable water. I looked it up online and some of the symptoms seemed applicable. I’m always wary of using the internet as a diagnostic tool, but for the record,

THIS TIME I WAS RIGHT!! HA!!

Ok, that was petty. I like to be a little smug about being right about such things.

I will say though, that having giardia is unexpectedly handy for a few things, such as:

- Explaining why I’ve gone to Jamba Juice for lunch every other day recently
- Why Mike has to do the dishes, “because the smell of old food makes me sick”
- Why I don’t cook anything anymore
- Why I don’t clean either
- Why I’m sleeping in late and not doing anything productive before I go to work.

So remember, the next time you have a parasite, you can blame just about anything on it, along the lines of “I can’t do that, it makes my giardia unhappy”.