Adventures in Food Poisoning

Warning: This post is icky. Read it at your own risk.

I woke up a little nauseous on Wednesday morning, but didn't think much of it. I attributed it to watching too much of "The Walking Dead" (we blew through Seasons 1 and 2 in about five days. P.S. If you're looking for a diet plan, I highly recommend watching this show at night with someone. I was so completely fascinated that I couldn't stop watching, yet so grossed out that I never once thought about ice cream/late-night snacks - genius, right?). There were also plenty of other nausea-creating stresses on the horizon: I had to team-teach a lecture with another TA - Claire - that day, I had to prepare and teach two discussion sections on Friday, I had a ten-page paper due on Friday that I had barely started, so you know, the usual.

Anyway, I did what I usually do in such circumstances - told myself to get over it, got up, made a satisfying breakfast to get me all the way from 8:30 to 2:30 when I would get home and eat lunch before going back for my late-night film class, ate said breakfast, and speed-walked to my class. I felt a little bit queasy when I was climbing up the stairs, but Walking Dead, stress, papers, blah blah blah, and I kept going. I was feeling pretty good when I got to class and even better after I set up our PowerPoint and figured out the computer podium and lights. Then class started. The first fifteen minutes were fine, mostly because Claire was talking and I was sitting on the stool taking deep breaths behind her. As I got ready for my turn, I could feel my stomach twisting a little every time I moved, but things really got bad when I started to get an extremely uncomfortable, disoriented, lightheaded feeling in - where else? - my head. I fought it for about ten minutes, but this dizzy headache feeling kept growing until I realized that I was going to pass out. I was in denial at first - You're supposed to be TEACHING in a minute, for crying out loud! This CANNOT be happening! Man up, Ruth! - but with every passing minute it became more and more obvious that my body didn't give a hoot about my nerves or where I was or what I had to do. Claire was talking, and I had my notes already spread out on the podium, but I decided finally that I had to leave. Fortunately, there was yet another TA - Shaina - sitting in the audience whom I was friends with, and I decided to go to her, ask her to come outside in the hall with me, and tell her there that she would need to tell Claire I was sick and they would have to read my notes and show the slides without me.

Unfortunately, by the time I made the decision to go, my body was pretty much running on autopilot. As soon as I got up and started making my way up the aisle towards Shaina, things that I took for granted started shutting down at an unbelievably rapid pace. I had my eyes open, but I couldn't see. My legs were moving, but I couldn't find my balance. My hearing got really fuzzy, and at one point I lost it completely. I ended up groping for points of reference and eventually stumbled into a wall, where I stayed until my head cleared enough for me to see Shaina's face. I managed to get her to realize that I needed her to go out with me into the hall. When we got there, we sat down to talk, but my stomach and head were both churning so furiously that I could barely get out the words "So, I'm not feeling too good" before my body made a split-second decision and I had a distinct moment of clarity wherein I knew I was going to throw up. Three heaving explosions later and my nice breakfast of turkey, eggs, and orange juice was all over the floor.

I immediately felt better - the fuzzy hearing vanished, my head cleared, my balance was back and I had control over my body again. I even felt like waltzing back into the classroom as if nothing had happened and picking up the lecture. However, I had to wait in the hall for Shaina to come back with the janitor and with paper towels and tissues (somehow she got the cutest little red tissues with pictures of sheep on them - I was so reluctant to use them) to wipe my shoes, pants, and the floor. After a few minutes of making sure I was "done," I went back in, drank from my trusty water bottle (I had considered finding a water fountain, but we were in a very inconveniently located classroom), finished the lecture (Claire had already done about 1/5 of it for me), and then went home since I was still feeling lightheaded and drained.

When I got home, I was overcome by ravenous, incredible thirst. I drank all the water I had in the refrigerator and still couldn't get enough. It didn't seem as if I had drunk any water at all. My lips were extremely dry. I kept drinking. Not long after, heavy-duty diarrhea set in - we're talking four pairs of underwear ruined within a matter of hours. For the rest of the day I alternated between bed and toilet, eating nothing (the thought of food was revolting) and drinking only water. I felt incredibly tired and weak and still very drymouthed, though I was slightly wary of water in large amounts since I knew whatever I drank would evacuate itself out of my system about five-ten minutes after it went in. Any thoughts I had of going to my late-night film class completely vanished around this point (I would be lucky to sit through the credits, let alone a two-hour film). When Matthew got home, he brought me a minipack of Gatorade drinks. They didn't help much with the diarrhea but did help greatly with my lightheadedness and also with something Matthew called electrolytes but which I called tasty yummyness and feeling like a human again.

For the next few days, I survived on water and Gatorade, sometimes not even wanting either but forcing myself to drink to try to ward off dehydration, headaches, and weakness. On Thursday, after staying home from volleyball (good call) and from another class I TA for (probably a good call but I still feel sad about missing it), I felt well enough to eat a can of soup for dinner, my first substantial meal since Tuesday night. I paid for my folly later with a very perilous evening of stomach twistings and turnings, near throw-ups, disgusting burps, and sicky poop. Despite this sore tribulation that was Thursday night, I felt well enough on Friday to go to school (though I decreed it a casual Friday by skipping one class, not going to work, and doing the bare minimum in my discussion sections (to their great rejoicing)), but I didn't eat anything but water and Gatorade all day and let Matthew do the laundry while I stayed at home. I was astonished at how few of my students in my Friday discussion sections realized that I had even left or been slightly "off" during the Wednesday lecture, and one of the students even made my day by telling me that he thought I did the best job of all the TAs. AWWW. In fairness, the credit (if there be any) probably goes to Hogarth for being more interesting to talk to about than Swift or Moliere, but I was still ridiculously pleased/flattered/touched/intoxicated.

Around 7 pm on Friday evening I acquired a sudden ravenous craving for Chinese food, which Matthew was sweet and awesome enough to oblige. I ate about 1/3 of what he brought home - this was probably the happiest moment of my week, incidentally - and then had to force myself to stop - though my brain wanted to continue - before my stomach laid down a law irrevocably decreed in biology that if I kept eating I was going to regret it for the rest of my miserable, short, sad life. Consequently, the night was again perilous, but not quite as bad as Thursday. On Saturday morning, I was hoping that my appetite for Chinese food would resurface but my stomach vetoed this delicious temptation for the entire day, and eventually I had to satisfy myself with water, Gatorade, some applesauce, and, at the end of the day when I was likeliest to be hungry, a small bowl of ice cream and banana.

Things are feeling much better today - Sunday - both head and stomach-wise, and I expect I will be back to pretty much full capacity by Monday. Good thing, too, since my professor moved our ten-page paper to Monday (not because of my illness or the lack of preparation from our class, but because his father passed away and he had to leave town) and I was able to use the past two days (Wednesday and Thursday were both completely unproductive due to commitments with the bed/potty) to get a lot more work done. God works in mysterious ways.

And as for the cause of all this trouble? Stale, crunchy, three-week old French bread that Matthew brought home once upon a time to go with our perfectly fine-by-itself dinner of corn chowder (I took two bites on Tuesday night to determine whether or not it was worth keeping and concluded it wasn't). I always knew bread was out to get me.