I guess it was a stomach flu. I was very sick yesterday. I called my doctor today and she sent me to the hospital to get rehydrated ("No, you do not sound good, I can practically hear your potassium level over the phone, so get in there"). Sigh. Yuck.

She was right about my potassium level being low. It's dangerous to have a low potassium level because potassium helps control the beating of your heart. I was also so dehydrated that the nurse needed a few tries to set an IV; the first time she tried, my vein just collapsed. Double yuck.

So I spent nine hours in the emergency department at Massachusetts General today, most of it blessedly knocked out by an anti-nausea drug which has a side effect of making people sleepy. I kept half-waking to find someone clipping an oxygen meter to my finger or taking my blood pressure or wheeling me away to x-ray or ultrasound. I was out of it.

I looked up at one orderly and said, "You look just like Giancarlo Esposito." Which he did. I love that actor. But I couldn't think of a single thing he'd been in because my brain was just somewhere else, apparently. He told me people say he looks like AJ from the Backstreet Boys and that he's been asked for his autograph by groups of nervous little girls. I thought that was cute, but I don't know who AJ is, except that he's a member of a band about which I know absolutely nothing and apparently he looks like my orderly.

Finally, all of my tests came back negative, and they fed me salt-free saltines (huh?) and water and let me go home. And here I am, with my space heater pulled up close and my cat snoozing behind me and my head pounding. I'm grateful to be home. But man, I need some sleep.