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angstyaches · 2 years

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IRL holiday sickfic / aka Flick Teaches You A Lesson About Not Forgetting To Buy Sunscreen

CW: REAL LIFE mentions of sunburn, possible heatstroke and dehydration, feeling faint, panic attack, nausea, vomiting. Also, airports, airplanes, food, the sea, over-the-counter meds.

TLDR: my partner and I get horribly sunburned and are still very much dealing with it a week later. I throw up at the airport.

Note: I don’t usually post IRL stuff, and I’d appreciate it if there were no reblogs, please.

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Monday

I spent all of Sunday night shivering as a reaction to some sunburn on my upper thighs, which had started out during a short morning sunbathe, and worsened in the afternoon as we’d been walking around the shopping district. I was possibly feeling unwell due to slight dehydration too. I suck at remembering to drink water, even in the heat.

Despite my legs being on fire, I couldn't get warm, and around 6am when I heard my partner stirring, I begged him to spoon me so I could steal some of his heat. When we got up and started to get ready for the day, I had horrible cramps in my mid and lower stomach. My partner - from here, let’s just call him L - reckoned I might have had mild food poisoning from something we ate on Sunday. I sucked it up because it was our last full day before going home, and we had a trip planned.

We had to get to our ferry.

On the way, we stopped at a convenience store and picked up some water and snacks to take with us, and even though we’d discussed it the night before, we forgot to buy sunscreen.

It was a two-hour ride on a large ferry, which I’d originally worried would make me motion sick. Ironically, the trip didn't add to the sickness I was already feeling. I was actually in decent spirits by the time we got off the boat and took a rickety little bus to the beach we’d chosen to visit.

There was a shack by the beach that sold a few drinks and food items, and much to my despair, they didn’t sell sunscreen. I was more than a little concerned how little was left in our current sunscreen bottle, and at this point, I was afraid that I was doing nothing but coming across as negative and whiny. My stomach was still hurting a bit too, and honestly, I was relieved that there were toilets relatively close to the beach.

L saw that I was really worried about the sunscreen situation, so we decided to rent out a big beach umbrella, so we’d at least have some shade to retreat into while we were on the beach. The guy who was renting them out was super friendly, and up-sold us into also renting snorkelling gear. He set up our umbrella for us and we used the little sunscreen we had to cover our faces, and I put some on the parts of my legs that were already burnt.

It turned out that the snorkelling gear was the right choice, because the water was so clear and there were so many fish. The island had a bunch of little coral reefs that you could swim over, and it was both of our first times snorkelling, so it’s safe to say we did that for the majority of the three hours we spent at that beach.

Which meant that our backs were in direct sunlight for a long time.

L isn’t a strong swimmer, and he gets nervous in open water, so he went back to the rental guys and grabbed a life vest, so a lot of his back was shielded, apart from his shoulders and around his waist.

We had the most amazing time, but there was only one ferry back to the main island, so we had to rush to get the bus back to the port. We weren’t in too much pain just yet; we were just hot, and our skin could tell we’d been out in the sun for too long. At the time, I’d thought it’d been just a little too long.

It was about 7:30pm (and, mercifully, dark out) by the time we were back at our hotel and had showered. All we'd eaten all day was a light breakfast, and a snack around 2pm. Neither of us were particularly hungry, but we knew we needed to eat, so we set out walking towards the main food/shopping street. Looking back, I think we - or I, at least - were running on adrenaline from all of the swimming.

We found a pharmacy along the way, so we could pick up some aloe vera gel. L suggested getting some ibuprofen for the pain/inflammation that was starting to set in for both of us. At the time, it was still mostly my thighs - where I’d been burned the day before - that were bothering me.

We got in the queue to pay.

And whew.

I don't know if my medical anxiety was triggered from being around so many meds, or if it was the harsh lighting inside the pharmacy, or the pain was setting in, or if hunger and low blood sugar were hitting me, but I started feeling really, really horrible. And dizzy. Spacy. Almost like my soul was about to drift up out of my body.

I told L I didn't feel well, and he said it'd be okay, and that the ibuprofen would help. But my head was swimming and my vision was starting to blur, and my thoughts kept shifting between "I'm going to throw up" and "I'm going to pass out". All I wanted to do was sit down. I wanted to get the hell out of there. I didn't want to vomit on the floor of the pharmacy.

I could hear him telling me, “Flick*, if you’re going to pass out, don’t go outside”, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I didn’t want to collapse on the floor of the pharmacy, where people would then come and fuss over me and ask me questions in Japanese and possibly end up bringing me to a hospital. I was so frustrated and panicked because all I wanted to do was lie down, I knew lying down would help with this feeling so much, but I couldn’t just lie down on the sidewalk.

I sat down on the curb, ducking my head as low to my knees as I could. I glanced towards the pharmacy and I could see two junior high school boys staring at me from the aisles (Japan has these weird open-front pharmacies, especially near busy shopping areas, I’ve found), but I felt so horrible that I didn’t care. My vision was swimming, my hands were tingling, my breath didn’t feel like it was making it to my lungs.

L finished paying and came outside. The first thing he did was help me up. He told me I was having a panic attack, which I (now) think was spot-on, because the shortness of breath and the tingling in my limbs lined up with my usual attacks. He's good at spotting the signs at this point. He wasn’t even trying to tell me nothing else was wrong, just that the thing making me feel like I was dying was the panic attack.

The tingling got worse than it ever has, though, to the point where my hands went into claw-shapes that I couldn't break them out of. All of the gasping was drying my mouth and throat out, so I managed to tell him I needed water - of which I'd had shockingly little all day. Probably less than 200ml, despite spending most of the day in direct sunlight and swimming/walking around a lot.

We walked for a little while, and L popped two ibuprofen on the way (he’s crazy good at taking pills without water; I could never). He left me sitting against a bike rail and went into a convenience store to buy some water. He only left me for about a minute, but I was so scared that I was going to faint while he wasn’t there. When he came back out, I was dry-sobbing.

L let me drink some water, held both my hands, and told me it was going to be okay, even though it didn't feel okay right then. One of the best things he tells me is that while it feels like something is really wrong, nothing bad is going to happen to me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. In that moment, I hurt so much and felt so floaty and sick that I could only nod along complacently. I pitifully told him I didn’t think I could eat; the idea of heading to any of the restaurants we’d been talking about made me want to throw up. We decided to head back towards the hotel. He held my hand the whole way, and we went slowly so the movement wouldn't aggregate my burns.

I calmed down a bit, and we eventually came across a kebab shop that was only about five minutes away from our hotel. I knew he was hungry despite me being not, and the thought of sitting down in air conditioning was appealing, so we went in. I almost fell over my own feet taking off my shoes, and stepping up from the genkan was the first time I felt the creases in my lower back scream from being scorched.

Agreeing that he’d eat my food if it came out and I couldn’t eat it, L ordered chicken kebab wraps for both of us, plus a plate of plain rice, and two cokes.

I just laid my head on the table the entire time we were waiting for our order, self-conscious of the fact that I looked and seemed drunk, but I was still at the point where I didn't really care. It hurt so much to curl forward, but having somewhere to rest my head felt so right. I managed to drink my coke when it came, but two bites of the veggies from the kebab made me want to die, so I gave that to L and just picked away at some of the rice. L ate everything else, and declared that he was feeling so much better, pain-wise, after taking the ibuprofen about twenty minutes before, so he gave me two to take with my coke.

We both slept in a decent amount of pain that night, but the ibuprofen seemed to keep away the shivers that had hit me the night before, so that was something.

Tuesday

We had to get up and pack and get to the airport to come home.

We were both in so much pain as we got up and checked out. Luckily, getting a taxi to the airport was easy, and we took some more ibuprofen too. We decided we should eat before flying, since we would head straight for my car once we landed and would then have a two hour drive home. We ended up at A&W, where L ordered a burger, fries, and a muffin, and I got chilli cheese fries and a muffin. Besides the pain, I was feeling alright this morning, plus I was concerned about how little I'd eaten the day before. We finished our food and went to check in and drop off our suitcase.

And oh, boy, was the worst about to come.

There was a long queue for the check-in desk, and about halfway in, I started getting a stinging/tingling pain in my cheeks and jaws. I told L that I was getting “stingy cheeks”. This happens to me a lot when I'm dehydrated, so L didn’t worry too much beyond sounding sympathetic. He said we'd go buy some water once we'd checked in.

But then my head was swimming again, and my mouth was watering. I started leaning on the queue partitions whenever I could. Again, I started worrying that I seemed drunk, and although it occurred to me that they might not let me on the plane at all if they suspected I was inebriated, I couldn't compose myself fully. I think one of the main factors was how fucking raw my shoulders and back were, aggravated by the fact that I was carrying a very full backpack.

We finally got to the front, and we had to hand over our boarding passes and let the agent know our basic info. She weighed our suitcase, asked if we'd packed it ourselves etc., and asked both of us to confirm our names.

During the whole interaction, I was sweating and swallowing. I felt like a wooden doll come to life, with the sole purpose of convincing this woman that I was a real person. My eyes wandered aimlessly as I fought to keep myself upright. We still had one more queue to enter after this, to drop off our suitcase. It seemed impossible. My knees didn’t have it in them. My body was failing me.

I suddenly realised that I'd answered everything the agent specifically needed from me, so I tapped L's arm and told him, "I need to go". He nodded in understanding and I headed out of the check-in area.

My head was swimming so badly that I barely made out the location of the closest bathrooms. For some reason, I actually kept it together long enough to get there, find a suitable cubicle (the first one I entered had a very dirty toilet bowl, so I immediately went "nope"), hang my backpack on the door, and pull my phone out of my pocket so it wouldn’t end up in the bottom of the bowl.

I retched up a small mouthful at first, taking myself by surprise. I experience nausea on a semi-regular basis, but more often than not, it ends in light dry-heaving and maybe a little bile. I immediately saw a glimpse of my breakfast/lunch this time.

I was wearing my sunglasses on my head, and I could feel them shifting forward through my hair as my body heaved. I pulled them off and left them resting on top of the toilet paper holder, which I'd usually never dream of doing to something I put on my face. But again, better there than in the toilet. I retched again and again, bringing up pitiful scraps. I was leaning over with my hands on my thighs, my germ phobia at a level just high enough to keep me from kneeling down by the bowl (stupid idea, looking back. I should have just done it).

I realised that while I was gagging, I was holding a weird amount of tension in the pit of my stomach. And as soon as my brain acknowledged it, my abdominal muscles relaxed, like some kind of switch had been hit.

And then, everything I'd eaten that morning just came pouring out of me over the course of two or three gags, barely digested at all. I don't think I've thrown up that much, or that violently, in my whole adult life. It was Exorcist-level. It unfortunately splashed up and hit my favourite shirt (I would choose to wear a white shirt that day, wouldn't I? But it washed out, so all’s good now).

There was no definite “okay, I’m done now” moment, but L and the check-in counter popped into my head. I miserably felt for my phone to see if he needed me to hurry back for anything. All he'd messaged me was that he was outside the bathrooms he assumed I was in, and that we had a little bit of time before we needed to head for security.

My brain has a hard time reading tone, and I couldn’t tell if the “little bit of time” portion was a hint that I needed to hurry, so I started to tidy myself up. There was one person washing their hands when I came out, backpack slung over my tensed shoulder (as though keeping my shoulder tensed was somehow going to stop the backpack weighing so hard on my enflamed skin). They probably had no idea I’d just been sick, but I felt so disgusting and conspicuous as I went to wash my hands and my face.

So we headed through security, and the rest of the journey was okay. We both slept on the flight, with our heads pressed against the seats in front so our backs and shoulders weren't aggravated. The drive home was nasty, since I couldn't exactly crouch over the steering wheel the entire way.

But yeah, I guess I’ll never know exactly what made me throw up, but the factors are: pain, possible sunstroke/sun poisoning, eating too much in one go after not eating much the day before, heat, dehydration, or taking too many ibuprofen with not enough food. Those stomach cramps from the day before hadn’t bothered me since the previous afternoon, so I’m fairly sure those two weren’t related. My stomach didn’t even really hurt during the both vomiting situation, or after, now that I think about it.

Back Home

Anyway, jumping forward. I had no appetite for the first two days at L’s house, barely slept the first and second night in L's bed. Night three, I slept. Nights four and five, I was up again, itchy and burning and uncomfortable. We couldn't cuddle. I couldn't even sit properly on the couch until Saturday. Showering hurt so bad that I straight-up didn’t do it for two days, and couldn’t reach up to wash my hair until day four.

For the first few nights, L and I rubbed a mixture of aloe vera and calamine lotion onto each other’s backs. For him, he would hiss and groan, but for me, the cold and touch hurt so much that I had to curl up around a pillow and bury my face. It made me scream. It felt like my body was ripping apart. I cried. I usually composed myself and got up so I could do L’s back for him, but one of the nights was so bad that he said he’d manage by himself (his burn wasn’t as deep, or as wide), and just sat with me, playing with my hair since he couldn’t really touch me anywhere else.

Today is Sunday, and I still look like an actual demon from the pits of hell. Something from an actual horror film. Seriously, friends. Always stock check on sunscreen.

Always.

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*I don’t go by Flick in real life.

#Flickposting #irl sickness #irl whump #irl emeto #emeto #sunburn #heatstroke #idk that else to tag this with

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