Salmonella

On Friday the 26th I pulled myself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 8:30am to attend a chocolate demonstration at school. I felt a little funny but passed it off as that weird feeling you sometimes get when you aren’t used to waking up so early. You have to understand, I don’t get up before 10:00am if I don’t have to. I love to sleep. Leaving the apartment at 8:50, I trudged to Starbucks to meet Bailey for a coffee before the demo. So with White Chocolate Mochas in hand, we headed to the auditorium. The speaker proceeded to talk for two hours about how chocolate is made. In my opinion, this was not necessary, seeing as how most of us were pastry chefs. That’s when I really started to feel bad. We left the demo early and I spent most of the rest of the day in the bathroom. And at 4:00pm I headed to work.
Work passed by as usual, however, as the night wore on; I started feeling worse and worse. My stomach was cramping, I had really bad nausea and horrible back pain. That night, I probably spent most of the evening in the ladies room. Finally at the end of the night during clean up, I couldn’t take it any more. I had my crew finish what they were doing and we all went home.
That night, I woke up every hour running to the bathroom. I started to think that I must have food poisoning. I had horrible chills, even though I was lying on a heating pad. The worst part though was the cramping in my stomach. Around 5:00am I called my mother and told her my symptoms and she told me to go ahead and go to the hospital. She thought I might have a bladder or kidney infection. I had to wake up my room mate Kate; for fear that I wouldn’t be able to drive myself. We got to the ER around 5:30am and they placed me in a room right away and began running tests. My boyfriend Paul came in about an hour after we got there and he stayed with me, after Kate had to go to work. They started me on saline solution and Demerol for my nausea. About two hours later, they informed me that they were going to do am MRI and an Ultrasound, but in order to do both of those, they had to give me a catheter. Most Painful Experience Of My Life. And my nurse was no saint either, she yelled at me the whole time, no sympathy or compassion. A little while after that, my doctor and another nurse came in and without warning gave me a pelvic exam. Second Most Painful Experience Of My Life. Then they took me to have my MRI and Ultrasound. My Demerol began to wear off and in the ultrasound room I became nauseous again. When I threw up, since there was nothing in my stomach the only thing that could come up was pure bile. It was scary because I didn’t know that pure bile was dark hunter green. They then moved me to an observation room where they continued to run tests. Later that evening around 10:00pm my parents showed up, they decided to come down when they found out they still didn’t know what was wrong with me and since they were keeping me over night.
Sunday came with pain and more tests. They finally let me eat, but I was on a clear food diet, which meant chicken broth, a popsicle, Jello, and apple juice, for all meals. Sunday was the day I had the most pain, they only medication they could give me was Demerol for the pain, since they didn’t know what was wrong with me. I could have Demerol every three hours, but after two hours it began to wear off, so I had to survive that last hour on my own. As soon as they gave me the Demerol I would sleep for about an hour and a half to two hours then wake up for that last hour or so running in and out of the bathroom. Probably the funniest experience of my hospital stay was falling asleep in the bathroom, multiple times. I would be in so much pain that I would sometimes be in the bathroom for that last hour before I could have more medication. So when the nurse would come to give it to me, she would have to give it to me when I was in the bathroom. Next thing I knew they were taping me on the leg telling me it was time to get back into the bed. I could have sworn I was already in the bed. Monday carried on much like Sunday, however, that afternoon, I was informed that I had salmonella. So at this point they put me on antibiotics. It was time to start getting better. Monday night they gave me potassium via IV and all of a sudden my arm began to burn, almost like it was on fire. Apparently potassium can do that to some people. So they took me off of the IV and gave it to me in pill form. Tuesday carried on much like Monday, and by Tuesday night I felt much better and they informed me I could maybe go home tomorrow. Wednesday morning they gave me one more antibiotic and then Wednesday afternoon I was sent home.

Amazingly enough I attended a Halloween party later that evening, Paul and I were pirates.