Fun With Food Poisoning (Part One)

Many of you may know from my Facebook page that I spent a few days in the hospital a couple of weeks ago. It was quite the experience--and not one that I wish to repeat. At least I got a story out of it.

It all started on the last day of Pchum Ben, a Cambodian national holiday. I spent the day before hanging out with the girls at the Dream Home, playing games and eating special holiday foods. Maybe that's where everything went wrong. Or maybe it had something to do with the holiday itself, one that honors deceased relatives (one of my doctors actually joked about that; maybe I was possessed).

Saturday I woke up around noon feeling fine, maybe with a bit of a stomach ache. I went about my normal Saturday routine (trolling Buzzfeed and watching Korean TV), but I could tell something was off. I was tired, had a headache, and my stomach was growing increasingly more 'irritable.' Let's be real (I have no more shame), I was spending a lot of time in the bathroom and losing a lot of fluids--and not from puking.

As the day wore on I started to feel dizzier and dizzier and I couldn't drink water fast enough to replenish how much I was losing. At around 8 or 9pm I got up to get yet another glass of water and nearly passed out. I mean, I feel to the ground and everything went black for a minute, but I didn't really lose consciousness.



Anyway, very dramatically, I crawled over to my phone and called my roommate to ask her to take me to the hospital. As I waited to hear the sound of her moto outside, I started to become very, very nauseated. I laid on the floor and even put myself in the emergency position (since I was still feeling very theatrical).

Sofia arrived to take me to the hospital, but because it was Pchum Ben there wasn't a tuk tuk in sight. I agreed to try to ride on the back of her moto to the clinic since it was just around the corner. All we had to do was cross the Shit River (open sewer) and turn left. I put my pink helmet on and climbed onto the back of her moto.

Let me just say that I was REALLY out of it at this point. I was incredibly dizzy, faint, and nauseated. I was seriously afraid of passing out on way to the clinic and falling in the Shit River. Instead, halfway there I began to projectile vomit all over my pants, Sofia's pants, and the motorcycle. And I mean projectile. Nothing was spared. We pulled over--on the bridge going over the Shit River--and I proceeded to puke my brains out.



I sat in a puddle of my own vomit, next to the shit river, in the dark. I'm a natural hypochondriac, and at this point I thought I might actually die. This is perhaps the sickest I've ever been, aside from the time I got strep throat and pneumonia at the same time.

Then a group of moto and tuk tuk drivers emerged from the shadows and started crowding around Sofia and me. She did a good job of fending them off and trying to get one of them to stop gawking long enough to take me to a clinic. They all kept asking if I was drunk. Even in the depths of my agony I was deeply offended. If I didn't have vomit pouring out of my mouth I would have...probably not said anything. We were surrounded, and I was in a pretty vulnerable position, so it would probably be wise to keep my mouth shut. I was already humiliated.

  "Shit River" Original Photo here.

 Finally Sofia (who is a saint) got me into a tuk tuk and got me to the clinic. Thankfully, that was the last of my puking, for the moment. I really just wanted to sleep now.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)