Stomach Bugs Suck

Managed to roll out of bed to head out with the man to walk the dog. I had my first proper meal in a 1.5 days. Granola, berries and yoghurt. I couldn't keep much down. A little bit of food is sufficient. Any more and I'm back to perching on the toilet bowl. The coffee was good but I made the mistake of ordering a caffe latte. I couldn't bear to finish all of it. Or rather, the stomach objected.

I'm down with some stupid stomach bug that suddenly brought on three violent rounds of retching and diarrhea. What the. No fever, no cramps, no flu, no sore throat. I just couldn't hold it in. UGH. After three rounds of stinky mess, I staggered to the medicine cabinet to pop lomotil and charcoal pills. That didn't prevent the 3am final and fourth round of retching and diarrhea. The next day, I boiled up a pot of ginger water, and also prepped a bottle of honey-lemon water. Gotta hydrate!

A quick check with the friends wrought relief—they're okay, so it isn't food poisoning. I didn't eat anything that nobody else ate. The night I took ill, I even prepped dinner for the man and I, so I was damn worried that I was contagious and passed the bug to him. He's fine so far, so he didn't catch the bug. It's likely viral gastroenteritis. I canceled all gym class, coffee dates, lunches and dinners for the next two days. I couldn't eat anything anyway, and wasn't feeling 100%. Plus if it's viral gastroenteritis, I should stay away from humans.

This is so weird. I get indigestion and bloating, but I rarely get severe food poisoning unless I have been reckless. It can only be gastroenteritis either salmonella or viral. In recent memory, there have been two occasions when I was this ill from salmonella gastroenteritis. Once was on the night flight back from Tokyo, I ingested too-many raw quail eggs at the final dinner. The worst 7-hour red-eye flight ever. That came with fever and chills, and I had to crawl to the doctor for a jab. The second time was in rural Yunnan, when I ate cheese and ham, and the culprit was likely BOTH food items that have been contaminated because my roommate was violently ill too. We were woozy for three days. We refused to go to a Chinese hospital and survived on meds from my awesome medicine pouch.

I haven't gone to the clinic yet. They can't give me any other types of meds that I don't already stock. Also, uncomplicated gastroenteritis doesn't require antibiotics. I'll go if I need to get a jab. Since both diarrhea and vomiting have stopped, there isn't an urgency to get any jabs. I'm woozy, but the fever seems to have stayed away. So that's always a good sign that the body isn't fighting any other infection. Although there's mild nausea, I can keep a little food down now. Not too bad.