Just two days ago, I bragged smugly to a couple friends who were driving me home from work that I had never once in my life had food poisoning. And two days ago, that was true.
I'd seen Geoff endure many an episode of food poisoning over the years, and always assumed I was just more heartily constituted. But some higher power was listening in on my carpool and decided to smite me for my hubris.
This morning I awoke with a bad headache and mild nausea that I assumed was a migraine. I took two aspirin and sat down to write an indignant blog post about racism, which shockingly did not improve matters. Again, some higher power must've been punishing me for being a sanctimonious, woke white ally, because I had barely finished my very last self-righteous sentence and first sip of coffee when I was suddenly seized with a violent wave of dry heaving.
The rest, as they say, was history. And in this case, history lasted 8 hours.
Somewhere between pacing around frantically, going out on my deck for fresh air, sweating bullets of cold sweat, puking, shitting, doing my best impression of that girl from The Exorcist, and praying for someone to kill me, I asked Geoff what he thought it could be. Since no one else was sick, we narrowed it down to some questionable cilantro that only I had eaten the previous afternoon.
"You just have to ride it out," said Geoff with kind but authoritative expertise as he handed me a glass of water to "SIP SLOWLY." I called a doctor friend of mine and asked her permission to take expired Cipro that I still had from when I went to Vietnam two and a half years ago. She echoed Geoff's advice and told me to forget about the Cipro. Then I called my mommy and whined, and then I lay down in Isaac's room--the darkest, coolest room in the house--and prayed for death to come swiftly.
I don't remember much after that, other than hearing happy peals of oblivious children's laughter coming from the living room. At some point, everyone left the house and I came to in the late afternoon ready to accept Geoff's offer of dry toast and orange Gatorade served to me in bed. The whole thing gave new meaning to the name of this blog.
I don't blame you if the above account was too boring to read and you just skipped to the end. That's why I've reduced this entire narrative to a story in three pictures:
Step 1: Shady Cilantro
Step 2: The Exorcist
Step 3: Recovery
