Puked but Couldn't Rally

Ok so based off of the title of this you probably think your girl had a little too wild of a weekend and you're probably thinking "ok Claire, this is just embarrassing why are you telling us a story about you partying too hard?" Well, that's not really what this story is about. This is about a night of mine where absolutely no fun was had, but new experiences certainly were! This weekend I got the pleasure of having my first life experience with food poisoning. So if you're looking for a fun and upbeat story about a fun adventure I was on, I’d advise you leave now. This isn't the most fun of stories, but it happened, and it does for many people when traveling abroad so I'm going to share it, barring the unnecessary, gruesome details.

Thursday started off as a really good day. I went to school, sat there for a few hours, talked with my friends, came home, ate lunch, and felt great through all of it. Trouble really set in when I decided to have an afternoon snack. It started out as an innocent bowl of frozen strawberries with a little soymilk over it (frozen fruit and non-dairy milk are pretty typical for me at home). Directly after eating it I felt fine and I even did a little workout circuit since I hadn’t in a couple of days. Other than feeling a little fatigued I felt good and decided I would just nap it off. After all, I had plans to go out with a friend that night and I needed to rest up.

This was all about an hour before she was supposed to head over to my house to get ready and head out. So I told her that I would be napping up until about 10 minutes before she showed up. So I did. I fell asleep for about 45 minutes before abruptly waking up with that sick sensation in my stomach. I’ll spare you all the details, but the next thing I know my head was in the toilet, as were all of the contents of my stomach. Ok, so at this point I had thrown up once, my friend was 5 minutes from my house and puke and rally should be every college kid’s motto right? Wrong. I got dressed and did my best to rally, but then the cup of green tea I had made myself to calm my stomach came back up. My friend was over and our makeup was done so maybe twice was a charm and then I was done. Wrong again. 3 head in the toilet sessions and some excessive dry heaving later we decided it was time to put on sweatpants, turn on Netflix and call it a night. I would just spend the night feeling like crap and hopefully it would go away enough for me to get some sleep. WRONG X3. I spent about an hour trying to fall asleep but was having trouble because I was puking every 30 minutes and my stomach felt like it was being crushed by a hydraulic press. Finally, per the suggestion of my host mom, we went to the 24 hour clinic at about 11 PM. My poor friend got dragged along with us when the poor thing probably just wanted to sleep.

We hailed a taxi and were driven to the nearest clinic and when we arrived we spent at least 5 minutes trying to find the actual entrance. Not to be dramatic, but I felt like I was dying. When we found the entrance, I had to take a second to puke in the bushes outside. We waited inside for about 45 minutes (without puking thank god) and they got me into a bed, and started poking and prodding me. I got an IV with antibiotics and my blood taken, twice. Oh, and let’s not forget, one last puke for good measure. After awhile, my stomach pain started to subside and I hadn’t puked anymore so my doctor told me I could go home, but to come back in if my stomach pain came back, in case I had appendicitis (I was not about to have appendicitis. Nope. sorry satan. Not today. I refuse). Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. We got back home, and while I was still feeling a little gross, I was feeling ok enough to fall asleep finally around 2:30 AM.

I slept deeply and woke up at 8 AM which quite frankly did not feel sufficient for me. I did not wake up feeling like rainbows and sunshine. My whole body ached, and I was tired, and I didn’t want to move. That is pretty much how I felt the entire day. I only wanted to drink water, my appetite was nonexistent, and I was probably out of my bed for a grand total of 30 minutes throughout the entire day. This was better than the puking, but not by much. While I was still a little fatigued, I was feeling a million times better on Saturday an Sunday and was actually able to get up and walk around the city a bit/actively do my homework. On Sunday I even managed to get to church and praise God that I didn’t feel like trash bags anymore. I guess it was better that I got sick and missed out on the weekend instead of got sick and missed a bunch of class. But now I’m back and better than ever going to class without a sick note as an excuse to sleep in (sad). Hopefully this was my one stint of food poisoning that I get while I’m here and the only time I have to relay the ever so interesting adventures of being stuck in my bed all weekend. Let’s hope that my next story is a little more fun and doesn’t involve me and my bonding with the bathroom floor.

Chao por ahora,

Claire