I've never been a vomiter. If I'm sick, it's a sinus infection or, on rare occasions, the flu (when I refuse to go to the doctor...which happens), but never to I throw up. The last time I had a stomach virus, I was 5 and I caught it from my mom who, despite her efforts to talk me away from her bed, couldn't push me away fast enough from giving her a hug. I mean I only wanted her to feel better, but the next day, I was regretting that hug as I hurled over the toilet, begging for an "inventory" rather than a suppository. My parents got a laugh out of that one.
Anyway, for years now, I've had this strange dream where I'm throwing up, but it feels like I'm throwing up concrete, and I"m nearly choking on it because it's so thick. During my dream, I'm thinking of all the times I've seen my drunken friends throwing up on curb sides or over dorm toilets or, the most fun of my experiences, over a trash bag (not can) that I am holding up. Their vom was nice and luquidy-- easy for throwing up. Of course, they were heavily saturated, so that makes sense.
Sunday night, I found myself on the toilet throwing up into my laundry bucket (lined with a Kohl's bag I'm glad I brought), living this concrete-vomit dream. For lunch, I had eaten at a feast to celebrate the starting of school and the leaving of my village's students who would go to schools on the main island and here. Compared to other feasts I've visited, I didn't eat as much as I normally do. I did try one or two new dishes (one called faikekai...which I will never touch again), and I noticed that some of the meat tasted old...those of which I took two bites and stopped eating.
I felt okay for a couple of hours and noticed my stomach kept feeling heavier and heavier, as if a growing boulder lived in there. Like a friggin tumor. I wrote a letter to a friend, telling him how I'd just taken a shower in the rain (with a tank and shorts) for a measure of cleansing, because I'd felt enthralled by Eat, Pray, Love, and just hours later, doubled over my front porch, my back porch, and my toilet, I'm thinking,
"Yeah, now I'm f***ing cleansed."
A sick joke. Get it? A "sick" joke. Haha. Yeah, really not that funny.
And you know how mental conditioning works?
For example: if you're a kid with terrible allergies and you hate needles but you have to get allergy shots every week, and you get shots in the same mustard-yellow room your whole life, you become very hateful toward that mustard-yellow color.
Every time I went to my toilet, the vomit came without effort (except for that concrete chunkiness I nearly choked on), and every time I turned to my left side on my bed (the position I took when I couldn't move anymore to the bathroom and needed to vom into my pretty little pink bucket), I felt nauseous...even after the sickness passed.
All is well now, though. My last sickness was at about 3am Monday morning, and I spent all yesterday in my bed, internally moaning (and maybe it was audible, too) over the awful headache, neck ache, and backache that would NOT leave me the hell alone. I slowly sauntered into my village for one purpose: Sprite. And phone cards. I needed my mom's voice. So I returned to my house, slept on and off, avoided all door-knocks of kids who needed my attention, and finally texted some of the girls in my village to tell them what was going on. In the afternoon, I made myself eat 2 crackers and take some Tylenol. I miraculously slept WELL, woke up to my mom saying "Jame, how ya feelin hunny?" and everything just felt better.
I even felt so good this morning, I cleaned my bathroom, my pretty pink bucket, and, gasp, my toilet. After, of course, I had enough in my belly (tea and a couple of crackers with peanut butter) to hold off any mentally-associated nausea. Luckily, the cleaner smelled much stronger than the puke. Thank God.
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