The Tory Party

e. coli

I have e. coli poisoning! I`m so rad and trendy!

I’ve been sick on (very on) and off for a week, and first thought it was a flu-ey thing that’s been going around.

It first hit with gut cramps, fever, headache and muscle aches — but nothing too grave — last Friday night. Then the poops hit.

The poops! Oh, how they hit. But I languished, cramped, pooped, drank water, was over it. Had gum graft surgery, took some Vicodin, lived the dream.

But maybe I just ran out of stuff to poop. Cos night before last I was attacked by an ancient and hideous evil, with an uncontrollable chill and fever and muscle aches and I went to a friend’s house and curled up in a papa-san chair and watched Amelie and “Mythbusters” until it busted my fever. Then I went home to have a good sweat. And got something to eat. Big mistake.

Early yesterday morning, ri-i-ight about five hours after that eating, I woke up to cramps and “Hey, I`m glad I left last winter’s Bust Magazine in here.”

Then I kinda couldn’t leave the house. Cos of all the pooping. Missed my first academic class. Lame.

But then love flowed from my friends like sweet, sweet Loperamide HCL. My Japanese housemate brought me meds from health services and a bottle of delicious water, which appeared magically on my bedside as if borne by angels made of lavender candy. Just today she made me chicken and onion soup which rocked my very soul and I’ve had two helpings of already.

Just as awesomely, random_tangent brought me a Juice Shop smoothie and a DVD of lots of “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.” I lay in bed gently spooning Jake the Dog with my smoothie and my Foster’s in a blissed-out haze of exquisite ecstasy.

I mean, I was very sick and pitiful and not comfortable at all. Pity me! I AM A PRETTY PRETTY PRINCESS!

Meds meant I could leave the house yesterday and today — though I apparently need to keep taking them. And I started eating verra, verra carefully — also being careful of the aforementioned gum graft, which was really a cake walk, and I`m not hating having a bunch of leftover Vicodin around, either.

But I must have sent my dad an email during this that made him nervous, and he rallied the troops of my family. He asked if maybe it sounded like the e. coli poisoning that’s been going on, and I was like “Uh?” because I am in kolledge and I don’t read the news unless I put it in my ADD bookmarks folder between Achewood and PvP.

So I ran this theory past my sister, and it got her Doctor Seestor seal of plausibility. She thought it was weird that she, who lives in Chicago, was not sick, but I in North Carolina was. We both eat a lotta that bagged spinach.

Then SPROING. Hey, wait. I’ve been getting spinach from ALDI all summer! And everything prepackaged in ALDI comes from Batavia, IL! I know this because, working at ALDI, I read the words “Batavia, IL” about forty times a day!


SPROING!

So now I got two bags of unopened fresh spinach, from ALDI, in my fridge. The question is begged — what do I do with it? They say it’s OK if you cook it thoroughly, but, dude, why am I even going to let a bag full of poop germs cootie up my counter when I can get canned-ass spinach for like forty cents a can? Not worth it. NOT WORTH IT.


What’s funnier, if funnier is even possible, is that I have an eight-hour shift at ALDI tomorrow. I’ve been worried about whether I`ll be OK — it’s hard enough to take a pee-pee break at ALDI, much less a nice five-minute cramp-a-thon. But now I can be like, “Um, yeah, back in a sec, gotta take a little bathroom time here for the ALDI poop spinach of death!”

Ah ha ha ha!



OK, brb. Bathroom time…

***Update 9/16***

Blood has been sighted! Ossome. I was afraid I was fakin`, missing the critical identifying element of the e. coli experience. I had noticed some red before, but thoght it was cos I ate something red. I have not been eating anything red. Not exactly noshin` the old mango-tuna-red-pepper salads the last week.

I also think what I’ve had is two separate illnesses — something over last weekend like what’s been going around, and then something new and interesting starting this past Wednesday. I ate a roast beef sandwich at noon the morning before my mouth surgery, with spinach out of a brand new bag (yeah, I journal my food, what of it?) Then twenty hours later I got the galloping fever chills.

More research is being conducted, specifically at health services on Monday. I`m gonna bring the remainder of the bag of spinach and wear my best poopin` shoes!