4 hours = loosing 5 lbs

So last weekend, the weekend prior to a very intense experimental period that rendered my PI to tell me “that’s an awful lot of experiments in a short time you are cramming in there”*, I spent the night between Friday and Saturday in my bathroom looming over the sink and the ‘white friend’. When I was finally crawling back into bed I noticed two things; first - my stomach muscles were achy from being intensly used for the long time and second I was really going through my head what kind of microbe that could be causing my distress.

After spending a few hours trying to ignore the Thirst, (if I was a vampire I would now understand the idea of Thirst…) since my stomach did not agree with the rest of my body that I actually could benefit from drinking even just a little tiny bit of fluids, I came up with my three potential culprits. The only thing that did not make sense was the incubation time. Oh, and since I had spent the whole of Friday cooking lunches and dinners for “the intense experimental period” I wanted to know if that was contaminated and I had threw away 5 hours of cooking…

My potential culprits were; Staphylococcus aureus, Campylobacter and Salmonella (as we will see I think the perpetrator was something completely different and not food related). All three of these are nasty when in food… and all three include the symptoms of nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramping, diarrhea to a certain extent.

Staph was the one I liked the most since the toxin renders a rapid illness with fast loss of water/fluids and ‘attack vomiting’. It is also over once the intestines and stomach are ‘cleansed’ of the toxin since that is the source of illness. Campylobacter is a bit nastier (imho) since the bacteria adheres to the intestine wall and grows there, making it a prolonged infection. And Salmonella is also alive within you when it causes disease and can, in bad cases, be transported into the blood stream… Both the latter are commonly found within bird intestine and most poultry meat has campylobacter on it according to CDC. Since this was last weekend, the Turkey Eating Festivity, I thought about the birds and shuddered.

My fears got bigger when I realized that I had fever (another symptom not that common with Staph toxin) so I was starting to envision the worst scenario; the bloody stool samples that would make it a more definite campo/salmonella infection. Both things I dread and hate, not the least because I have too good knowledge about potential side effects of both the infections, not to mention that they would render me in bed for at least 6 days which would interfere with my experiment!

After receiving word that not all the people at Thanksgiving dinner were sick I started to feel a bit more nervous about my own cooking, I have yet to be sick from my own cooking. Maybe because I am franticly washing the cut board with HOT water and dish soap after having fresh chicken on there? Lucky for me I’d had a ‘taster’ of all the food (exception of the veggie soup) and since that person was healthy and happy I ruled out that too.

I was left with what? A baby. Yes, the sad truth was that the common denominator between the people who had gotten sick at the party was that we were all “outsiders” who did not live with the cute 18 month old baby who had crawled around and been smiling and drooling everywhere. (I guess it didn’t help that I had had her in my lap for a while singing silly things?!) Looking through the “common diseases from babies” I realized that it would must likely be a virus, duh. Maybe it was a rotavirus, maybe a calicivirus/Norwalk virus that some of the other family members would be less susceptible to (or already been sick earlier on). The good thing with those kind of viruses are that they tend to clear the body quite rapidly. The bad thing, apart from being unable to actually do anything but wait for them to clear, is that they are extremely contagious.*

I still was a bit hesitant about the whole thing (did I mention that I was going to have an intense experimental period and wanted this weekend to rest and be happy…..) and kept feeling my back pain as a sign of Campylobacter (I must have said a thousand times “what if I get Guillain-Barré syndrome?” or maybe “this will lead to early on arthritis”) and dreaded the trips to the toilet in case the bloody diarrhea would make an appearance. I don’t think of myself as a hypochondriac but I do acknowledge that the “potential effects” is what makes me nervous so not knowing what it was made me thinking of all potential horrible things that could happen later on.

After fighting going to bed for too long I finally caved in, taking a few ibuprofen for the fever (“Staph don’t normally give fever, what if I am sick until next Wednesday? Who’s going to look after my experiment?!”). I slept like a dead person. I woke up 13 hours later completely fine. No fever, no back ache, no nausea, no nothing. I didn’t really eat much food during the next couple of days but focused on bringing back fluids to my body, but overall I was fine after the hibernation in bed.

I feel so ashamed to be reduced to a whimpering youngster but stomach issues are one of the few things that really make me helpless…. and since I was now well I could start my 15 days long experimental period on time. And maybe more importantly, all the food that I cooked that Friday was good to eat, I’ve enjoyed it during the week! And I am truly Thankful that it wasn’t anything worse than this.

*the only thing that might hamper the diagnosis is that calicivirus is usually as contagious that all people sharing a place will get sick if one person gets sick. Then again, not sharing a bath room helps tremendously. Or use bleach/cleaning products extensively. And repeated washing of hands, refraining of touching or breathing directly at people (read; lay isolated in your bed and don’t expect visitors) helps too. Most importantly though, no fingers in mouth or nose and always, always wash your hands after being to the bathroom. ;)