The day my body fought back

I’m dying…well not really, but I felt like it yesterday. Two days ago, I met my Chicago friend Ryan (who was in town for the night for a business meeting) for dinner. I ordered a simple club sandwich with no mayo. Around 4am, I woke up with the biggest stomach ache and proceeded to puke my brains out in the toilet. I mean violently retching puking. Now I always feel better after I puke, strange but true, I went back to bed. When my alarm for work went off, I started going through my morning routine. First thing on the list…go to the bathroom (come on everyone goes to the bathroom when they wake up, we don’t have bladders of steel). While sitting one end on the toilet I had a tidal wave of nausea hit me. I had to make a choice, what end do I put on the toilet? Um…. Thank goodness those NYC bathrooms are sooooo small. The sink is pressed up against the toilet, so I was able to just lean over and empty my stomach in the sink. I decided to take the day off of work and try to get over this bug. Since I had sufficiently rid myself of all of my food and liquid from multiple trips to the toilet & sink, I decided I needed something to drink in order to avoid dehydration. Hmmm, apple juice looks good. Wrong! I guess the acid in the apple juice was not what my stomach needed, and it came back up instantly. I started sipping on water, but that came up as well (come on, water! Damn you body!). I found that I could resist the urge to vomit if I lay perfectly still and horizontal. Yeah tell me how boring that got especially when my body had enough sleep. Luckily, Marshall was a good guy and brought me over Gatorade, 7-up, Pepto-bismol, and ice cream. He found me in bed spooning my vomit bowl and I think he was quite disgusted and afraid to touch anything. My doctor friends (Shannon the MD and Melanie the PhD….okay close enough) both told me it was a stomach bug, food poisoning, or pregnancy. Obviously it was not pregnancy (oh and I have soooo much sympathy for women who are that sick during pregnancy….if morning sickness is like that, I will never ever have kids!). The bug of food poisoning should clear my system in the next 24 hours. Thankfully it has and I am vomit free (well at least for the last 8 hours).

Now I apologize for anyone I didn’t really sympathize for when they claimed they could not keep anything thing down (yes even just water). I never have been that sick before in my entire life, so now I will mean it when I say “you poor thing, you must be miserable and feel as if you are going to die”.