Eight Days Later (Don't read if you are easily grossed out).

My body has decided to revolt against all food. For several days, I survived on Gatorade and/or Hammer Heed. Whenever I tried one of the recommended "bland" choices, I'd immediately become nauseous or worse. It's not that I wasn't hungry, but it was easier to just not eat than suffer the consequences. As long as there was no food in my stomach, I functioned fine.

By Thursday, though, I had such awful hunger pangs that I said the heck with it, I'm eating. Not a good decision. After another sleepless night due to nausea, cramping, and frequent trips to visit my new best friend, the toilet bowl, I went to see the doc. I was poked and prodded and asked several times if I'd recently drank untreated creek water. Um, no. (Although not such a dumb question to one who hikes or runs trails.)

Then, I was sent to the hospital for blood work and instructions for how to give a stool sample. If only they had told me that piece of good news when I first arrived - say three hours earlier? 'Cause the fact was, I had nothing left in me. Add to that the pressure of needing to produce enough of something to check for the complicated list of gross things on my lab request that could be taking over my body completely put a halt to the entire process. I felt faint, wanted to pass out, then froze. So, here I sit with my bucket, in the off chance I might be brave enough to eat real food to produce a specimen in order to rush it back to the lab within the allotted time frame. Good times.

And how is your weekend?