Food Poisoning Hell

Hall food tastes horrible. There is no need to go into detail again as it's a commonly known fact. You go for dinner every evening with the lowest expectations possible, anticipating horrible food and yet, like something out of a bad horror flick, the kitchen staff STILL manages to surprise you!!


And as if having to eat bad food everyday isn't bad enough, I got food poisoning off it last Wednesday. Okay, I also had some fast food that afternoon but it's easier to blame the nastier tasting one. So I got a stomach bug off a meal that I didn't even enjoy in the first place. If there's anything worse than getting screwed, it's getting screwed twice.




Here, let's try something. Try and picture this.




You're married to a fat lady. Day after day, you come home from your 9-5 job, exhausted from your long day of web-surfing and water-cooler chatting, and you come home to a less than flattering looking woman. She's the complete package: she burps when she eats, she snorts every now and then and she has a huge mole on her nose. Oh yeah, and she weighs 400 pounds. You don't like to face her, but you have to because she lives with you. You put up with it day after day after day until one beautiful night, while you're both sleeping on the bed, she rolls over, squashes you and you suffocate. You kick and you struggle and you felt like hell. You fall unconscious, and you're immediately rushed to the hospital.



Here's the best part: a) You survive. b) Yep, she's still your wife.





Twist it a bit and that is exactly how it is with hall food at my place at the moment.






I woke up at around 5 am last Thursday and I didn't feel right at all. For some reason, I was feeling incredibly nauseous. I went to the toilet to take a leak and on the way back to my room, I felt it. I quickly opened my room door, jumped for the sink immediately and it was amazing, what I puked. Pure water with a bit of scraps, and believe me when I tell you, it wasn't a trickle, it was like turning on a tap at full blast. My knees were completely weak while I was doing The Great Puke.



I felt a bit better after that and decided to sleep it off but that's when the fever struck. Not long after, I begin to feel that gastric like pain at the stomach area. Cue my first trip to the loo. I shall spare you the details. All I will say is that it was nothing disgusting, just water. As in really fluid water, water. and to round everything off and tie it with a ribbon, I had a presentation later that day.



I love presentations and public speaking, it's one of the few things I excel in. I was up all night preparing the business pitch for the water pump my group designed but it was all to go to waste. I decided to split the parts up for my groupmates to present and needless to say, with the lack of preparation time, it didn't come off very well.



Later that afternoon, I managed to make an appointment with the doctor at 9am the next day, which is very lucky. Yeah, you have to make appointments here in the UK, and sometimes, you have to wait out an entire weekend to see a doctor even if you have a fever!



I took some off the pills I brought from Malaysia. I got those the last time I had food poisoning in Malaysia and since the University Hospital people were really generous with the drugs, I have excess. I had to fight the pain the entire night and the loss of appetite really wasn't helping at all. The good news was I managed to sweat out the fever by nightfall.




I was much better the following morning when I went for my doctor's appointment. His name was Dr. Royal and right from the get-go, I noticed something wrong. He was typing in my symptoms into the computer and out came a list of what the disease was, and how to treat it etc etc. I don't know about you but when I go to see a doctor, the last thing I want to see on his screen is this!




















No, it wasn't exactly Google and one of my medic friends later explained that doctors have to follow certain procedures for treating certain diseases to avoid getting sued. In any case, he does know what he is doing and he only brought up the page to print it for me so fair play.




















What irked me though, was the treatment he suggested: there are no treatment, just drink more fluids and get more rest. Translated in my head as: just sit out the pain and pray hard it goes away in a few days. What the... nothing? not even some pain-killers or the like? When I had gastroenteritis in Malaysia, the hospital people jabbed something into me and instantly (literally), I felt much better. Like I said just now, they even gave me some medicine to bring home.




So I guess, the point of seeing a doctor is to confirm that you have the disease you already know you have. Oh, and the doctor's letter. Which is actually not a bad consolation because now I get to delay the submission of my coursework that was due on Friday for a whole weekend. Not bad.




My mum went mental on me when she heard I got food poisoning. Can't blame her, I've been here barely half a year and I've already been sick thrice. She's hell-bent on getting me home for Easter because she "can't trust me to take care of myself". Mothers, over-protective much. My baby's been real caring though, as always, muaks muaks.




By the way, after the last post about "gaining weight", I actually managed to gain weight: 3kg to be exact. The kick in the nuts? I got food poisoning and flushed all my efforts down the toilet, literally. Life is good.