My entire floor decided we would all attend a formal hall together at college Friday night and hurried to book our spots in time, put on our dresses, grabbed our formal gowns, and headed to dinner—rather excited, might I add. We walked in, bought some wine, and spread out at the table, anticipating dinner. The menu included shrimp cocktail, steak, twice-baked potatoes, carrots, snap peas, rolls, and chocolate cherry cake to finish it all off. We took pictures, toasted the end of third week, and had a wonderful dinner.
Flash forward to Sunday morning, 6:00 a.m. I wake up suddenly, overwhelmingly nauseous. After being in a denial for a minute—“No, I can’t be sick, can I?”—I leaped out of bed and ran to the trash can to throw up for the first time. Surprised, and dismayed, I brushed my teeth and got back into bed. A half an hour later, an hour later, 8:00, 8:30, 9:20, 10:00, 10:40, 12:00, the vomiting continued. In and out of a miserable sleep, I leapt up, threw up, cleaned up—repeat. The dreadful, exhausting cycle continued, and I finally gave in and called my mom at work. No matter how grown-up I’m beginning to feel, she’s the one person I call when sick.
I told her I couldn’t even keep water down, and I was concerned I would never stop throwing up with this stomach flu reigning over my body. She told me the dreaded advice I saw coming: I needed to go to the ER. Having a digestive disease—diabetes—never meshes well with a digestive illness like the stomach flu. If my blood sugar went low, I wouldn’t be able to treat myself since I couldn’t keep anything down, which could lead to me passing out. With all the doctors’ offices being closed on a Sunday, my only option was to go to the hospital. I’ll be honest—I started crying. I was so fatigued, achy, feverish, I had so much work to do, I didn’t want to have to ask any of my friends for help—this was the last thing I needed.
Okay, I conceded. Okay, you’re right, Mom. I asked my good friend Nichola to help me figure out how to get to the nearest ER and she volunteered to call a cab and take me. I hated to potentially give her the flu as well, to take up her whole Sunday afternoon; luckily God has blessed me with some truly, truly awesome friends. We got to the ER and I simply gave them my name and they pulled up all my information—England has National Healthcare, of course, so the whole trip cost me nothing. The estimated wait was only 4 hours or so: lovely.
I became intimately acquainted with the restroom in the waiting room and looked around, taking in the sick babies, large number of women with injured arms and men with injured legs (not sure why it split so evenly between the sexes), soaking in the general misery and pain and impatience of the ER waiting room. They called my name after an hour for the preliminary check-up, taking my blood pressure, pulse, and blood. The nurse just took my blood while I was in a waiting room chair, throwing the needle back on the tray (didn’t seem quite hygienic…). Then I had to wait a few more hours and curled up on two chairs, exhausted.
Finally, the doctor called my name and had me follow him into some supply-room-like office near the bathroom, asked me a few questions, and wrote me a prescription for some anti-nausea medicine. He told me I couldn’t fill it at the hospital, though: of course. Businesses close early on Sundays in England, and most of the pharmacies had just closed. So I had to wander over to some random small pharmacy that was still open: but of course, they didn’t have my prescription. The greatest irony? They just gave me an over-the-counter medicine I could have gotten without a prescription or going to the ER. Wonderful. Nichola and I headed home, where I proceeded to sleep for the next 12 hours or so, gradually drinking some water and keeping it down.
The nausea had passed but then the sad news came that everyone on my floor had begun to feel ill. Not only them, but everyone who had gone to formal hall and eaten the shrimp began to feel ill: we all had food poisoning, potentially norovirus. Fabulous. I feel as though norovirus follows me around: it was at diabetes camp a few years ago (disastrous!), at Georgetown last year, and now at Oxford. Guess the third time’s the charm for me. People experienced the food poisoning/noro in various levels of intensity, and all of us felt better within about 24 hours. Monday morning when I emerged from my room, the floor had this feeling of having survived a battle; we all stumbled around looking a bit shell-shocked, the kitchen felt evacuated and abandoned. We clustered around groaning and clutching our stomachs, relieved to be feeling slightly better.
Unfortunately, most of had to rearrange our tutorial schedule for the week. I now have two stressful weeks of work in a row with having had to postpone one of my tutorials. I’m walking away from my first food poisoning experience feeling first and foremost grateful for my health: we always seem to take it for granted until we get ill. Gradually, I’ve been eating more and more like my normal self this week, and I think my stomach is losing its bitterness towards, and is starting to forgive, food. I’ve even ventured back to campus, despite them poisoning me. When will I next attend a formal hall at Mansfield? We’ll have to see about that one…
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