I echo the sentiment on losing traditions re: Thanksgiving and Christmas.
So... I've had an interesting week! Some of it was actually good, but since other parts were definitely not, it seems appropriate to post it here anyway.
Since I knew I wouldn't have time to come back to Cincinnati or any similar area before the wedding, I knew I wanted to have my bachelor party while I was up here -- figured it was the only time I could get everyone together for it. I put BWT and Devin in charge of it. Almost everyone I wanted to be there could make it the 23rd, so that's when it ended up being (couldn't find a date where everyone could make it, but that's to be expected with holidays). They had trouble getting a venue (such as Dave & Buster's) but Devin's parents were nice enough to host it for us and it was a FREAKING BLAST.
Now I had four beers, which... with my relatively low tolerance, probably would give me a slight or moderate hangover for Christmas Eve morning. Even though I don't drink often at all, there was a night earlier in the semester where I had four beers and the next day I had a slight headache and aches but it wasn't too bad. After Devin's bachelor party a little while ago, I had six rum and cokes, which was a bit more intense than the aforementioned... still no puking though, and certainly nothing I didn't get over after most of the day was done.
This time? I got home around 4:00AM. Woke up at 7:00AM with THE WORST HEADACHE EVER. I felt like my brain was going to explode every nanosecond consecutively for all of eternity. I also felt achy and somewhat of the hot/cold crap. Thankfully I made it back to sleep... woke up around 1:00PM. Head wasn't quite as bad, but boy were other things worse. Felt like full on major flu. Sadly, this was now Christmas Eve, and we had my mom's side gathering to go to. I pumped myself full of medicine, blah blah, sucked it up and went. Was relatively OK for the first hour or so, after that... absolutely dreadful. I thought it was all because of a hangover.
Turns out I had a fever of 105. Hot/cold like CRAZY. Swollen feeling in my throat. Taste buds were awful. Super achy. The worst part is that, unbeknownst to some, I suffer from restless legs syndrome, and so the aches and restlessness of my legs were at many times actually the most unbearable part of my sickness. This was seriously one of the WORST times I've ever been ill. Hands down.
Christmas day wasn't any better until about two-thirds of the way through. Then my fever started coming down.
Thankfully, yesterday I was at 100, and was feeling OK enough to go with Annie to her mom's side celebration up in Lima. Today I feel about the same as yesterday.
What's the worst part? My brother, mom, dad, and now Annie all seem to have varying degrees of the same thing, AND Christmas day is always the day my dad, mom, brother, and I spend our Christmas together. I spent that day sleeping and sitting in a chair watching Pawn Stars. All day.
So I don't know what the heck happened, since all I had before the bachelor party was a lingering cough from a cold I had a week and a half previous. But my best guess is that the drinking possibly lowered my immune system and I got sick with an actual flu at some point in the process -- because especially my symptoms from 7:00AM when I woke up at first to 1:00PM and the rest of Christmas Eve were somewhat similar but definitely characterized more so by hangover and by flu respectively, I would say. Who knows though.