How to express: a narrator is narrating an event in the past, and wants to describe an event 2 years before that?

Question

In English this is very easy to express, but I'm struggling to express it in Chinese. I've asked multiple natives and they are all struggling with this (much to everyone's surprise). Basically, you have the following situation: a story with a narrator explaining some events in the past. The events are happening during some time during the narrators high school years. The narrator at one point wants to explain the equivalent of: "Two years before I had gotten a bad sickness, which is why I drank so much water." We have all sort of thought up the following: 在那之前的两年…… but the problem with this is that in Chinese if you use this it's unclear whether the event was 2 years before, or sometime during those 2 years. It's a duration, not a specific time. Is there any way to express "2 points before some ambiguous time"? I don't want to have to resort to absolute times for everything. Thank you for your help!

Answer 1

"自從"兩年前我生了一場重病以後, 我開始喝很多水。

or 兩年前我生了一場重病, "從那時候"開始我喝很多水。

Answer 2

Hi, the appropriate saying should be, for example, “在我们购物的两小时前，飞机就已经起飞了“。