#88 - The Stomach Bug That Really Bugged Me

Here is the irony in life. For the last ten days, I have had some sort of "itis" in my intestines and have gained 6 pounds. Who has a stomach virus and gains weight?

For the first four nights of my illness, I hardly got any sleep. Intermittently, I would be awakened with terrible [as can only be described as] intestinal "spasms". If I ate some saltines, like 5 or 6, popped some Tums, and laid on my stomach, the pain would subside enough for me to go back to sleep. During the day my stomach was sour and not its usual self... except for one aspect. I still had my same good appetite, and no matter what I ate, nothing spewed from above or below. The only thing that I stayed away from was coffee because that seemed to intensify the acid tummy, and I also figured out that my stomach felt best when it was filled, and filled with toast, hot cereal, crackers, and such. I'm assuming that's why the spasms were worse during the night... no food. Interestingly, during the whole 10 days, I never had any fever, chills or other symptoms.

Anyway, by the fifth day, I finally called my doctor. I told him what was going on and he said that he was surprised I didn't have any other symptoms besides pain, but that I should come in the next day [day 6] to get a check up. Low and behold, night 5 was pretty uneventful as far as the spasms were concerned. I did wake up at 3 a.m. with very strong hunger-like pains, but chalked that up to getting better. I took two shots of Mylanta, choked back a few saltines, and went back to sleep. I called the doc the next morning and told him I thought I was on the road to recovery. He said, let's keep in touch.

On nights 6, 7, 8 and 9, I've been awakened with those strong hunger-like pains, but no spasms, and the day-time sour stomach left on day seven. I was on the phone with my girlfriend sharing my stomach woes when she told me that my illness sounded just like something she had a few years ago, and that by day five, she was at the doctor's office getting scoped -- meaning that a tube was put down her throat and through her intestines to see what was wrong. Either I have a greater tolerance for pain, or a greater fear of getting scoped, but either way, she said they found nothing and that it took a good 10-11 days for her to finally feel like her stomach was back to normal.

Needless to say, she lost a lot of weight... which she didn't need to lose in the first, second or third place. Life just isn't fair sometimes. I, who has an iron stomach and never gets stomach problems, finally gets a stomach virus, and instead of losing weight and my appetite, I gained both.