THE SICKNESS: 30-POUND FEVER DREAM

E74 THE SICKNESS_ 30-POUND FEVER DREAM

Transcript

Dalton Anderson (00:00.632) Welcome to Mitch Step Podcast, where we discuss entrepreneurship, enter trends, and the occasional book review. A great work trip turned into a nightmare. I lost 30 pounds, night sweats, fever, vertigo, throwing up, hospital visits, urgent care, but I'm back. I'm back. I'm better than ever. I'm not really as back as I think I am, but if you tell yourself that you're back, you'll be back eventually.

It's the mindset, you know, it's all in the mind, but no, in all seriousness, I was legitimately very sick. So sick that I had to take two and a half weeks off of work. couldn't record any podcast episodes, which was very saddening that I broke my streak. But I was thinking, well, if I record all the episodes that I owe and publish them, is it

Am I necessarily breaking the streak? mean, this is just, it's just like a random catastrophic event. I don't know. Technically the streak is broken, but I would like to, I would like the ability to bring it back. I liked my streak. It was something I had great pride in, but regardless, I am back on the, on the podcast scheduling of once a week.

And I would like to discuss a couple things. I think the two big takeaways I have from being sick is one, if you're too sick to shower, you gotta go to the hospital. And then the second takeaway I have is never leave your place in a mess because you don't know how you're gonna come back. Those are the two that I'm gonna bring into my life now going forward. So I travel quite a bit for work and occasionally I'll, edit.

things come up at work or come up in my personal life and things just get away from you. And then you get to this point where you're like right before the trip is happening and you haven't packed and your flight leaves in an hour and a half and you just pack your stuff and you go and you come back and you're placed a mess, but well, not necessarily a mess of mess. Just disorganized and it's not neat, not tidy. And it's not a, it's not a, it's not a shop, clean shop.

Dalton Anderson (02:28.162) You want to have a clean shop when you leave because you don't know how you're to come back. And people tell you that all the time where it's like, you know, when you go on your trip, make sure you like, if you go on a long trip, make sure you clean your sheets and stuff like that. That's all good. That's all good. And how often do people do that before they're long trips? Typically they don't, but it's nice to come back with clean sheets.

Same just here where it's like, you always hear it. make sure you leave your place in a great state. You know, you might get sick when you come back. It never happens. And then at one time it happens. You're sick for weeks, like bedridden, horrible. So going forward, I'm going to have a clean shop when I leave. And that's, that's how I'm going to run my, run my domain, my eminent domain going forward. That's not happening.

And the whole too sick to shower thing, mean, that was, that was tough. But I mean, really in the gist of it, I went to this, this work trip, right? This, I went out of town or before I went out of town, right? I, I spent a week in New York, took some PTO, got settled in my place ish. Like really I was doing touristy stuff the whole time and didn't really pay much attention to my place because I was never home.

Did that for a week. Lovely time. Did all the stuff, you know, explored West Village, East Village, Midtown, ate at the little eateries and the TikTok videos and whatever it may be. We did it all. And we saw, when I say we, I was with Sarah, we saw the Statue of Liberty, our family name on Ellis Island. We

did all sorts of touristy stuff. went to Queens, Queens Night Market. We went to Fleshing and got some Chinese. And we went to these famous delis and all sorts of New York stuff that you do. Mostly centered around eateries and museums. We went to the Met.

Dalton Anderson (04:42.498) Really good time. And then the week after that, that was the week I was really supposed to get settled on my place. I had the work trip. I went to Ohio for intro tech or not. I was going to say intro tech.

I am this. There's not the right one. Scout Intratech. So I went to Columbus, Ohio for the Scout Intratech conference, which was absolutely lovely. Well put together, beautiful venue. It was at the Columbus. Columbus Crew Stadium in their basement slash like you took lunch in their.

They're sweet. It was really nice. It was, was phenomenal. Like I ate lunch on the, on the stadium seats and just watch, watch people tend to the grass. It was so peaceful, beautiful. Kevin Ben definitely is just going, it was awesome. And it was a great conference because it was like big enough to be meaningful, but small enough to be intimate. And I've been to other conferences where like the conference is so big that

you have to make sure you have enough time to get to your next 15 minute meeting to talk to your next vendor, your prospective vendor. And it might be a 25 to 45 minute walk over there. Like it's just so far and it's just such a massive place and the meetings are just in these different spots. It's just tough. And this was a little bit different where you could...

it was pretty much open, open service where you had meetings and stuff, but you could, you could just chat and it was, it was great. I really liked it. So I had an awesome time in Columbus. Great. Wonderful city, by the way. I was surprised how cool the city was. Only thing it was kind of severancey vibe. And I, I say that and people from Columbus who agree and you're like, what do mean?

Dalton Anderson (06:39.68) And it is one of those things that people know, but they can't say it. It's so odd because there's a company nationwide insurance that pretty much, I mean, they've got nationwide ad, they've got nationwide arena. They've got so many buildings that are just plastered with nationwide logos. And then they have buildings that are owned by nationwide, but secretly owned by nationwide. And so they own so much of the city.

And it's just like an unspoken rule that you don't really mention it. And it was so funny. Like when I was at this like work event, I was just like, I'm just amazed how, how integrated nationwide is here. It's impressive. And just dead silent, dead silent. Like they just knew, I just wanted to see what they would say. And they just knew that, yeah, that's a no go for us. can't say anything.

And so it's just like this weird, weird eerie feeling that there's just like this, just like this company owns the city. But anyways, I mean, it's not like they're bad folk, but yeah, just it from an outsider looking at it, it seemed odd, but not that they're being malicious or doing bad things. It's just, it's just odd that they've got a street stadium.

walking area, a multi-use complex, a tower, multiple towers, many buildings, probably held buildings. was just, I mean, I don't want to kick a dead horse, but it was funny and interesting. But other than that, the city was like super cool, like very walkable and the great weather. It was great. Yeah. Highly recommend. So, and I would have loved to be able to see a Columbus Crew game.

That would have been super cool. Brand new stadium, just beautiful stadium. Kind of a hike away from the city, you know, but it was okay. So I went to the conference and then on my flight back, I was like, am I hung over or am I sick? When I woke up in the morning and then on my flight back,

Dalton Anderson (09:07.276) I was like, man, if I'm hungover, this is crazy. I didn't drink that much. Had a couple drinks and did some networking stuff and had a good time with folks. And we went out and after dinner and stuff like that, I got home a little late. So I was like, maybe it's a sleep thing. And then I'm on the flight and I've just got this like brutal headache and fever. And I'm like, no, this is this, this in my eyes start hurting. And I was like, I got to get a mask. I might have like COVID or something.

And then I get home and man, I've got a crazy fever and I, my eyes are killing me. And I'm like, Oh, this is COVID no big deal. We've dealt with this before. Not gonna, not gonna freak out over that, but it would be nice to get COVID medicine. And the fever was, was going on for a couple of days, but it was fine. Like I didn't have to.

Like over the weekend I was just dealing with it and I didn't have any real issues.

It was fine, right? No coughing, no nothing. My eyes stopped hurting. So it was really just like a discomfort of the fever and that subsided. And then all I had was just like night sweats and I was sweating so much. It was crazy. Like I had to rotate where I was on the bed. Like I would sleep right side, left side, and then middle. And then it was getting to the point where I was just sweating just so much that I had to rotate covers and then I had to sleep on towels.

to make sure that I gave the covers enough time to dry and that I didn't like soak through anything. So it had everything, it had time to dry. So I was just, I've never experienced that before. That was crazy. So I was like, okay, well that's inconvenient, but it's not like, ah man, like that sucks. Like I'm really sick. And then what happened was out of nowhere,

Dalton Anderson (11:14.892) I started getting better, right? And I was fine. I was like, yeah, I'm on the, I'm on the men. And then I got hit with vertigo and that was my first experience of vertigo. And if you've never had that, please, I hope that you'd never do because it's fun. And the folks that deal with vertigo consistently, I don't know how you do it. It was very difficult, probably up there on one of the most difficult things I've had to deal with.

especially dealing with vertigo alone, it was exceptionally challenging. And the way that I would describe it is if you're not familiar, it's just like it messes with your equilibrium. And basically what happened to me was a virus attacked my stomach and then also somehow attacked my like inner ear drum thing. And then that mess with my nerve receptors from my equilibrium.

So basically one ear was saying one thing and the other ear was saying something else. And so they were just out of whack, right? And your brain eventually figures out that your ear is wrong. Like one of the ears are misfiring and it like recalibrates, but then it recalibrates and it's still listening to the other ear. But the other year is not necessarily right anymore because the, the one that was working is still working, but the one that's off,

is off. So what winds up happening is you either get bad signals from your bad ear or you get good signals from your good ear, but your brain doesn't really know how to interpret it. So it just feels like you're spinning around like all the time. Like I always felt like I was upside down or sideways or falling, rolling down a hill, stopping rolling down the hill and then rolling up a hill. And it just feels like you're

You're just never in one spot. You don't know where you are. It is really difficult to walk around, get out of bed. Even when you're laying down, it's still brutal. the really the only way you could do it is like sleep, sleep like sitting up ish and that helps a little bit, but it's still, it still sucks. And what all that does is it basically, you you're just, you feel like you're just on like crazy drugs or something like that. Like,

Dalton Anderson (13:41.281) I don't know, I mean...

I'm not saying I take drugs, but that's only really describing it. you're just, you're just like, you don't know what's going on. You're super confused. Your head is spinning nonstop. Your, your stomach, you just feel weak. It just like, I don't know. Like maybe you go on like some crazy college bender thing and you just feel horrible for weeks. Like just like the most brutal hangover you've ever had and just like times are by like six or seven and then do that for weeks.

and then you're spinning around nonstop, like that's kind of how it felt. And that leads to you not being able to put any food down or like basic human functions are really hard, like getting up and getting water or taking out the trash or taking a shower.

getting up to go to the bathroom. Like all these things are just like every little thing that you take for granted is an absolute challenge. Like a brutal challenge. Like, you know, do I take out the trash and throw up or do I leave the trash or, know, do I make myself really sick taking a shower and having to lay down for two hours to recover or do I not take a shower? Do I get up and get water and have to lay on the floor for a bit or

can I do without water for now? So it's just like every little thing that you just, you don't even think about was just like a massive challenge. might take me hours. Like it would take me an hour to eat a banana when I was super sick. Or it might take me 45 minutes to eat five saltine crackers or something like that. And so one is just really not efficient. Two,

Dalton Anderson (15:34.414) I couldn't eat anything and I was having a certain point. I couldn't eat anything for a while and I was losing a lot of weight and I was not feeling too good. Obviously it's like a multi-week fast. That's not what I signed up for. And then at a certain point I was having trouble keeping down water. And then that's when I went to the hospital and I got an IV and they did a whole bunch of scans on me. And luckily

Everything from my health perspective was perfectly fine besides me being severely dehydrated and not having enough nutrition, but I could still go a couple more weeks, unfortunately, without food. Wouldn't be the best, but as long as I keep down water, it was fine. And there wasn't anything like very serious wrong with me just that I had a just a bad run in with the virus, which is I'm very thankful for that. And.

what I was getting at is, man, that sucked. Like, that's all I'm trying to say is that it was really not fun. And so I'm better now, not having vertigo, and vertigo is just a crazy thing because if you get it, you have a likelihood of getting it permanently, and you've got to do like rehab for it and do these certain exercises and like turn your head and like balance on one leg and.

all these things and that's what's to help recalibrate your brain. But the only real way to recalibrate your brain is, is to do stuff that makes you sick. And so it's basically you just doing things that make you sick until you can't handle it anymore and you take a break and then you just do it again and then you do it again. Not fun at all either. So

And the rehab is important because if you don't do the rehab, then you have a higher likelihood of retaining vertigo as one of your attributes. So luckily, it seems like my brain is recalibrated. I can turn my head like for weeks. I would say for two weeks afterwards, I didn't have vertigo consistently. I would still get an occasional episode of vertigo and have to lay down.

Dalton Anderson (17:58.102) or if I was looking on the street and I just twisted my head to the right or to the left to view people or cars or whatever, I would get sick. That's gone away, but it lingers for a while. It's been like six weeks. And so now it's good, but typically the timeline is six to, I think six to nine weeks is till you get better. So I'm ahead of the game, but I,

I did follow the rehab. So long story short, leave your place spotless before you travel. If you leave in a rush and it's not clean, you'll come back and you potentially will come back broken like I was and your place will just get dirtier and dirtier. And it's, it's way, way more convenient to come back sick.

to a clean place and going forward, that's something that I'll be doing. And then the last thing that's, it's pretty important is, and it's crucial to understand is if you can't shower, if you're not confident that you can shower, you gotta go to the hospital. Like if you're like, man, I don't know if

I can shower, I can make it to the shower. And if I make it to the shower, I might pass out or I might fall down. Yeah, you've got to, you've got to get help. And so I think for a couple of days I was like, you know what? I'm not, I don't, I'm not confident I could shower, but then

I was like, okay, if I can't shower, then I gotta go to the hospital. I was thinking like, I didn't shower for one day and the next day I was like, I don't know about that shower, the whole thing, like this whole shower thing. don't know. I don't know if I'd jive with this. And I was like, all right, man, like, listen up. This is kind of serious. Can't shower. And then the

Dalton Anderson (20:19.694) the next day I was having trouble like I was that day I was having trouble putting down water and the next day I was having trouble putting down water. So was two days, no water, four and a half days, no food. And I was like, okay, you're going to the hospital, which is something I didn't want to do one because the hospitals are super expensive, but you know, it would suck to die early from dehydration, which is a massive killer around the world.

A lot of people die from being dehydrated every year. mostly because of diarrhea, but I was throwing up a lot so similar.

So yeah, I'm getting back, I'm getting back to old me. I lost the 30 pounds as I mentioned, I'm up 10 pounds. And so the strength is returning where I'm not so weak and.

I was like just feeling queasy and my muscles just didn't feel good. I just don't know. Things, things just felt really heavy. Like my phone one day was like my phone felt heavy. I was like, my goodness. So I'm eating meals again. I'm eating big meals, big boy meals. I'm feeding myself handsome portions and I'm waking up just starving all the time, but I just gotta be careful. I don't eat too much because my digestive system is still working.

working on figuring itself out, so it's still finding itself after all these changes.

Dalton Anderson (21:49.474) But recently I had, yesterday I had, actually yesterday I had that buy one get one free from Uber Eats, some Chinese. And then the day before that had Chinese again. Chinese is good because they typically don't use milk in their stuff and I found that milk.

Milk is what's been not what's been but one of the foods that has made me sick a couple times when I've been trying to try new foods and integrate more nutrition into my daily intake and consumption. So dairy has been a problem.

And I've since cut out dairy for a bit. And so I Chinese Chinese and I Chinese today for lunch. And then I had dinner tonight and had a burger with with cheese on it. So that's dairy. So I'm making making some headway there and fries. So I'm getting the calories and I'm feeling a lot better, a lot better. So I am just.

I'm just getting better, I'm just getting better. And the resilience that I have found with dealing with this nonsense that I've dealt with, I was sick, and just the battle of vertigo, mentally, I am so much stronger. I feel like my mental strength is stronger than maybe like majority of people, but this occurrence was...

tested me.

Dalton Anderson (23:31.938) That's one weird, I'm a weirdo. I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. It sucks so much, but I was like, yes, this is my mission. This is my mission. I'm gonna get better from this. Yeah, maybe I'm just a little twisted and brutal, but I loved it. It was great. I wouldn't do it again and I wouldn't recommend it, but it was really fun afterwards. I'm like, yes, now I'm gonna be.

Now I'm to be a little bit more fortified in certain areas.

So what's next? I mean, I've been out for a couple of weeks, right? So let me get a little bit more settled. I owe you three episodes. So I'll deliver those. I'll package those up. I'll get them done. Let me get a couple of episodes ahead and

Once I get a couple of episodes ahead, I'll just start releasing two episodes a week for a bit until I catch up. And then we'll go back to the original once a week cadence, but I want to get at least two episodes ahead or at least one. Let's call it at least one episode. mean, so it's two episodes in the bank. One episode is going to go out the week, the following week, and then I'll have one episode left. So I just need two episodes in the bank and then I'll start releasing the extra episodes per week.

There's a lot of stuff to talk about. My mom had brought up an interesting topic about how AI data centers are using up a lot of water and electricity and just doing some research on that. There's the Grok AI companion that I thought was pretty interesting. And I still have the subscription to Grok so I could chat with the AI companion. It's really odd, odd, odd thing.

Dalton Anderson (25:22.574) There was some news from OpenAI. I'm looking forward to their open weights model. They pushed it out, but I think that's going to get launched. Meta has just been on a recruiting spree. So there's that. I want to talk about some of people they hired. And then one thing that I think is huge is Windsor founder team and

big engineers like the big engineers that they thought were the most talented left the company and were hired by Google. So it's complete mercenary drive from the founders team, which is very disappointing from a startup and especially the people that believed in you and the company and you convinced to come over. They've got families, loved ones, partners,

and you just left them high and dry. That is not jive with me. It does not jive with startup community and I think it's very bad. Very bad. So I'd like to talk about that as well.

Yeah, and I guess if you've been super sick and it really sucked, call it out in the comments. Let me know how sick you were and how you dealt with it and how it made you a little bit stronger. And I just want to encourage everybody to prioritize their health. That's one of the most important things. Just a simple virus potentially almost took me out. Just a baby virus, nothing crazy.

And you just never know. You never know when you're gonna have your last day or your last week or your last conversation with your mom or your dad or your grandma or your granddad or any family or your girlfriend or your wife, your kids. Make sure you cherish those moments. You don't know when it legitimately is your last time talking to those folks. And it could be your last time or their last time. So just make sure that

Dalton Anderson (27:41.954) When you're ending conversations, you try to end them in the best light. And if you don't end it right, make it right quickly. Don't leave things unended and in a bad spot.

Dalton Anderson (28:00.0) Okay, well, I appreciate everyone being patient with me and I'm going get back to it. I've also got some interesting guests that want to come on the show from the conference. So I've got a couple lined up. I just got to schedule it and kick that off. So yeah, just overall very exciting and I'm happy to get some stuff, some guests on the show and

Anyways, wherever you are in this world, good afternoon, good evening, good morning. Have a great day. Thank you for listening and tune in next week. Goodbye.