When bad food gets served.

As told by Eric:
A quick trip to buy a studying table at Ikea was unsuccessful and the non-furniture related side effects lingered a bit too long. We did our usual thing, taking advantage of the Ikea restaurant, with Kelly having a chicken pasta meal and myself with their classic meatball and mashed potato entrée –thank goodness we had different meals. Then we went about our business looking for a table and sadly finding out that it was out of stock. I got food poisoning from my dinner, and fought the pain for hours thinking it was simply an upset stomach or diarrhea. I struggled through a mostly sleepless night and at 3:30am I was throwing up and hoped that this would take care of the problem. Sadly, it persisted and got worse. I ended up wallowing in pain and nausea waiting by the toilet to vomit a 2nd time. Kelly awoke and found me doubled over in pain on the floor of the downstairs bathroom. I am hesitant to go to emergency rooms, but Kelly suggested it and I had already started to convince myself that I should go.
The trip to the hospital was HORRIBLE, every bump and movement was greatly accentuated and it took all of my concentration or distraction ability to keep my mind off the nausea and pain. Even before we left I was starting to feel light headed and then going along it got worse, and then my hands started to go numb, was I close to passing out? We made it. Luckily the hospital is not busy at 6am, so I got in and in about 40 minutes had an IV hooked up for 2-liters of fluids to relieve my dehydration. I was also given a dose of nausea medicine, but it wasn’t in my system soon enough and I again emptied my stomach contents. I was also given a dose of narcotics but it was not enough, so I was given a second one soon after. At that point I was finally feeling relief and I closed my eyes to catch up on sleep as we waited for blood test results. Everything checked out okay and the last throw-up got the remainder of the bad food out which stopped the problem. We went home and I napped for a few hours before I got up and went to school for my lab class. For the next week I felt the post-effects of food poisoning. I bruised my right kidney when I was vomiting, so it was quite sore for about 3 days. My stomach was sore for several days as well and my stools were not right until about the 6th day. Between the food poisoning and strong doses of Motrin, I had intestinal bleeding causing dark, black stole for several days. Thankfully, it is over and I am feeling much better. Eating out, you never know when you’ll consume the meal that was not prepared right. Thankfully food poisoning is much rarer here than if I lived in other countries

Love,
Eric