Food Poisoning: It's a Real Mess

It began at 5:02pm.

The swirling discomfort right above my spare tire.

Something told me it was Mum's curried fish I ate for lunch. I thought the tofu puffs in there smelled funny.

In 20 minutes, the pain came more certainly and in great, big, slap-your-face waves.

I shot for the loo and must have heaved-ho half my intestines into the white pot because I felt quite good after that. You know, kind of light.

But the relief was shortlived. You see, we may have mini Cornettos and Drumsticks, mini Haagen Daz's and mini pies but Nature likes the havoc she creates to be full on MAXI. Just like the pads I used to wear when I was younger and no sanitary napkin company had yet thought of Thins.

I had to go again 15 minutes right after the first Hiroshima. And this time, things were looking pretty shapeless.

By 6pm, someone was definitely treating my stomach like a punching bag. I made a beeline for home, which is a 1-hour traffic-congested journey to Cheras.

I called Dad to open the gates 10 minutes before I got to the gates. And when I finally made it into the garage, I was freezing like a bunny in Antartica (yup, the fever had come), and my ass could light up the whole Amazon jungle.

I related my experience to Dad and Mum but Mum didn't want to believe her curry could be the devil spawn of all curries. In fact, when I stepped into the house, she had just heated up some leftovers for their dinner. The aroma made me want to puke out the rest of my organs.

I held my nose and dived into my room. But since my room is literally a box next to the kitchen, it was reeking of the curry Mum had just heated up in the wok.

HELL.

While I lay in bed under my comforter, praying for the pain to subside and the shivers to go, absolutely nothing happened to my parents. So maybe it wasn't the curry but at this point in time, I wasn't really giving two hoots about what the source of my misery was - I only wanted it all to go away.

Dad dragged my booty off to the clinic after checking up on me and discovering nothing had changed from two hours before (read: I was still shivering under the covers and looking like roadkill.)

As it happened, my family doctor was on leave and in his place was a young just-graduated-from-university chap. First of all, just-graduated-from-university chap forgot to take my temperature. Secondly, he gave my tummy a few knocks but couldn't really say what he heard, felt, thought, or was confused about. Thirdly, he asked me how my stools were so I started worrying about whether I should taccept medication from him. ("They don't look like anything at the moment" was my reply as if I needed to reply even.)

The good news is (good news for him, that is) whatever it was that he gave me, worked. Some minty drink, some spasm-ceasing red pill and some white tabs for "the hazy state of my stools".

I suspect that Colin's prayer for me made them work, too. He said it when his attempts to make me smile only got him the roadkill look.

Now that I am well again and Mr. Stomach is not doing the hillbilly jiggle, I can tell you this: I am not eating my Mum's curried fish again. And in case I forget and you're at my home and my Mum has made some curried fish and I decide to offer you some, please say No.