A Fistfull of Vomit
One of my personal quirks is that I have only very rarely thrown-up over my 68 years. I know this isn’t a particularly pleasant topic, but it is one of life’s little events that we almost all have to face every once in a while. For my part, I can recall facing that physical requirement once in the 60s, once in the 70s and again once in the 90s. The first time was while sitting in between my Uncle John (a retired Navy Chief Petty Officer) and his wife Kitty on the bench front seat of their 1958 Buick. We were somewhere in Iowa on our first day westward from my home in Madison, Wisconsin. I had just consumed a strawberry soda pop from our last gas station stop and you can imagine how delightful that made this all for the three of us in that un-seatbelted front bench seat. I remember John using his best Naval, “Oh, geez, God…” while Kitty with the dangling cigarette on her lip just said, “leave the boy alone, John, he can’t help it…”. That was a hard introduction to the world of vomit for me to forget. The next stop on that train came during Senior year at Cornell. One of my apartment mate’s girlfriends had made a stuffing with mushrooms. Since I’m not a big shroom fan I mostly swallowed rather than chewed and the result was whole mushrooms hurtling towards the toilet in the middle of the night. What I remember about that was that a good way to start the process it’s to focus your attention on the toilet bowl of a 6-man shared house toilet. Works every time, I imagine. THe second memorable aspect was characterized well once on a BIll Cosby comedy album where he describes the out-of-body experience of imitating Linda Blair’s Exorcist scene where the mouth opens and a firehose of matter spews forth at great speed. Cosby explains it by saying that you wouldn’t be surprised to see your shoes come out of your mouth, and that seems a pretty accurate description.
I had a bad stomach flu while driving a rental truck back from Ithaca in 1996, so my son Roger had the pleasure of seeing my third event at some rest-stop in Pennsylvania. I tend not to count all the near vomiting I did while adjusting to my lap band after my bariatric surgery. My esophageal sphincter was always wound pretty tight, but after it got lassoed by my lap band, forget it, nothing is coming up out of there once it goes in. Don’t get me wrong, I can get nauseous like anyone. I can even get that metallic taste in my mouth that suddenly appears out of nowhere and warns that something wants out. But for some reason, I can hover over a toilet bowl and feel thorough grossed-out, and still not produce any vomit to speak of. Gagging and retching don’t count because I have heaved multiple times without even so much as a teaspoon of stuff coming out of my throat. You might say that I have a very efficient caloric collection system that is very unwilling to give up any of its gains.
So, as I wrote yesterday, I am over COVID, having tested negative yesterday on day 13. As I also mentioned, that same day I awoke with a meaningful gut ache unlike anything I can ever recall having. I felt like I had been sucker punched right in the middle of my gut. It woke me up and stayed with me for most of day, but luckily receded by evening. Unfortunately, it did not leave me altogether and there it was again in the middle of the night, screaming my name. It’s a strange thing because it feels like severe hunger and thus I want to eat something to make it go away. But then, eating seems too risky and common sense tells me to go easy. I am not good at figuring out what I should or should not eat in certain circumstances, so I find it all confusing and default to crackers and water.
Since this is back at me today, I have done some more serious research on COVID-related gastrointestinal issues. It just seems too coincidental that someone who rarely gets sick has gotten this back-to-back with COVID. What I have found is that 25.9% of COVID infections get gastroenterological problems that last a few days at the end of your COVID session. The articles define it as a combination of diarrhea, vomiting and belly pain. That is a very good description of what I have in reverse. I have big-time belly pain that comes and goes and drills through my back when its here. Both days I have experienced that metallic mouth thing that yesterday ended with a moment of bowl-hugging and today ended with a side-of-the-road retch-stop that produced nothing as usual. As for my stool, all I will say is that it could be more solid and it is not extreme diarrhea in an explosive sense that I have experienced before. In this instance I consider any bowel movement to be a good passing of something that wants badly to get out of me. By the way, that is why you will rarely see me taking Imodium, since anything that wants out that badly should be let out and not plugged inside of you.
When Kim had her recent gastric bypass procedure, they took seven hours to extract her old lap band, which had attached itself to everything inside of her that it could find. I’ve now had my lap band for sixteen years and could not be happier with it. It works well in regulating my eating habits and I sincerely hope everything inside is still copasetic. I have always assumed that to be the case, but when your gut starts aching like it has these two days, you do wonder if perhaps the lasso has slipped or shifted and is giving me some sort of stranglehold. I certainly hope not since I had planned to just let that old lap band be one more thing in my cremation remains for my kids to wonder about. I do not relish going under the knife to have it taken out. Hell, I don’t even like to get it filled with saline as you are supposed to. It works fine. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Therefore, I am now presuming I have a 48-hour COVID-related tummy ache. We will see.
Every day I had my mild COVID symptoms I would visualize the symptoms leaving altogether, whether the nasal drip or the nagging cough. I find that if I visualize it, it will eventually be. So for now, I am imagining that tomorrow this gut ache will be gone or greatly diminished. I really don’t know whether the poser of positive thinking has any real impact, but as they say, it sure can’t hurt and it does tend to keep my spirits high and that probably does have an effect on my immune system, so I think it’s the right path.
Tomorrow I have an open dance card except for a dinner with another student from my ethics class. I’m anxious to see the evaluation results for the ethics class so I can properly adjust my curriculum for that same course in the Fall. Therefore, I am hoping that I can get some added insight from this dinner. Let’s just hope that I’ve used up all my fistful of vomit for this week.