So here's the deal, Part I...

Here's what led to the hospital stay last week:

• I was a bit nauseated/ tummyache most of the previous week, so I don't really know when this thing started.
  
  
• Fever started Friday, but was mild, so I took aspirin and went ahead and went to Heidelberg with my friends, as planned -- trip was meant to be Friday evening (dinner with friends), stay in hotel, shopping and stuff on Saturday, then back home. It's about 2.5 hours from here.
  
  
• Fever got very high Friday night, but I wasn't vomiting yet, so drugs were controlling it. Was trying to stay healthy enough to complete the short trip, but Saturday by noon, I was starting to circle the drain. We got in the car and flew down the autobahn to get home (they kept wanting me to go to a hospital in Germany, but NO WAY! I would have been stuck there somewhere, I wanted to get home). I was vomiting violently by this time. Like trying to take my shoes off from the inside.
  
  
• When we got home, Scott started taking care of me and I went to bed to try and recover. It just kept getting worse and worse until even I wanted to go to the hospital.
  
  
• Went to hospital, emergency ward all full of people -- I got in in front of all of them. They put me in an isolation room and all the doctors/nurses were gowned and masked because they didn't know what I had. After they confirmed flu tests were negative (and decided against meningitis spinal puncture thingy -- because my headache and neckache were simply from vomiting so vigorously), they removed isolation thing. They then believed it was salmonella, and pursued every iteration of chicken I had eaten in the past week. I couldn't remember fergodsake. Especially when my brain was simmering.
  
  
• They put me on a fast IV straight away and starting drawing the first of about 889 blood samples.
  
  
• My heart rate was extremely high (170 bpm) because of fever, dehydration and the extreme pressure of the violent vomiting (I still hurt so bad all over from it) and they did an EKG, some vein massage thing (hurt bad), another EKG, and finally gave me a drug that stopped my heart for 2-3 beats (it feels like an eternity and hurts like hell) and then it started back again at 120 and reduced to 100 within the hour. Two more EKGs.
  
  
• They had hung about 3 IV bags already by the first couple of hours and they wouldn't let me stand up because of the heart thing, so I had to pee in a bed pan (they look very different here, mostly like a saucepan with a lip around it) and wasn't good at it.
  
  
• They kept me in the Emergency ward overnight, in an area with a high ratio of doctors/nurses to patients. Kept waking me up for tests all the time. Chest x-ray. More EKGs. Bloodbloodbloodbloodblood.
  
  
• I kept thinking they'd let me go home the next day. LOL.
  
  
• Sunday they kept me in Emergency and considered moving me to ICU because of high sustained fever (over 41 for many hours). Good GOD please don't move me to ICU. I think I willed my temperature down a degree.
  
  
• They moved me to a regular ward when my fever reduced below 41. I stayed in that ward Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday until Wednesday morning, when they let me go home. Yippee!
  
  
• They finally diagnosed me the morning I left -- some other food-borne toxin (I can't even pronounce it) also found in chicken and eggs, salmonella-like, but not salmonella.
  
  
• Now I'm home, feeling better but still weak and woozy and muzzy-headed from time to time. I'm quite paranoid about what I eat... :-o

Thanks to everyone who called, emailed, SMSed or otherwise reached out to wish me well. That was very sweet and helped me recover faster. :-)