Out Sick This Week – Retire by 40

Hey everyone. I’m back in Portland, but all is not well. I’m calling in sick this week. It’ll be a short post today. A week ago, I thought life was good and nothing could go wrong. Oh boy, I found out life can hit you in unexpected places.

Food poisoning

First, I got food poisoning in Thailand. I tried too many weird foods and it caught up with me. It was probably the grilled jellyfish that did it. It gave me a little fever and I threw up on the way to the airport.

Missed flight

At the airport, Cathay Pacific refused to issue our tickets to Hong Kong. We missed a flight segment from Osaka to Tokyo previously. They said our return tickets are invalidated. The rest of our flight was with Air Canada. It was a mess.

I should have purchased new tickets to Hong Kong and tried to work it out with Air Canada. I’m pretty sure it would have been fine. Mrs. RB40 flew home from Japan and she didn’t have any problem. Air Canada doesn’t have an office in Thailand and I couldn’t get a hold of them on the phone. As a result, we missed our flight and I had to book a new flight home.

Let me tell you, trying to book a last-minute flight ticket is not fun. All the flight search engines kept showing me fake-out tickets. When I tried to purchase something, they’d say the payment couldn’t be processed. I think the economy seats were sold out on all the usual routes. The search engines showed these tickets, but they wouldn’t process when I pressed the purchase button. I checked the airline’s site directly and saw there were no economy seats left on those flights. It was aggravating.

Finally, I found a flight on Qantas for $1,500 each. This was an expensive lesson. My bad.

Bug bite?

At that point, my immune system was messed up from food poisoning and I was stressed out. Guess what happened next.

Monday: I thought I got a bug bite on my forehead. It felt like a bee sting. My forehead felt tingly, itchy, and a little numb. I tried to ignore it.

Tuesday: I started a 30-hour journey home on Tuesday morning. RB40Jr and I flew to Sydney, LAX, then Portland. The “bite” looked progressively worse. It blistered and grew. I thought it must have been a tick or flea. I never had this kind of reaction to a bug bite.

Wednesday: I got home and went straight to urgent care. The provider thought it might be shingles. I said no way. I just got the shingle vaccine 6 months ago. Besides, it wasn’t itchy like chickenpox. They took a swab and started me on antiviral pills, just in case.

Unfortunately, they were right. The lab came back and it was positive for the varicella-zoster virus. Welcome to old age, dumdum. Ugh! This is the same virus that causes chickenpox. Once you have chickenpox, the virus stays in your system to reemerge as shingles when you’re old.

Saturday: The shingles spread to my left eyebrow and the bridge of my nose. My eyelids are swollen and I can barely open my eyes. (I look like I went a few rounds with Apollo Creed.) I went to the urgent care again and my eyes are okay, for now. This is scary. If shingles spread to the eyeballs, it can cause vision loss. It can also cause hearing loss if it spreads to the ears. I’d need to head to the ER if I have any vision or hearing issues.

That’s it for now. I need to stay home and hope the antiviral pills work their magic soon. This sucks! Wish me luck… Hopefull, I’ll be back to normal by the end of next week. Stay healthy everyone.

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Joe started Retire by 40 in 2010 to figure out how to retire early. After 16 years of investing and saving, he achieved financial independence and retired at 38.

Passive income is the key to early retirement. This year, Joe is investing in commercial real estate with CrowdStreet. They have many projects across the USA so check them out!

Joe also highly recommends Personal Capital for DIY investors. They have many useful tools that will help you reach financial independence.