it finally happened

I finally got monumentally sick from something I ate.

If hearing about someone's illness grosses you out, seriously skip this. I'm sharing this as a kind of catharsis because being this sick in a foreign country on my day off has been really miserable. (Although I have to thank friends and family who reached out to ask how I was feeling, because that has gone a long way toward making me feel I'm not alone.)

There's a decent chance that I just have a stomach bug, but the fact that I ate street food prior to becoming violently ill is a good indicator that the food was what caused me to be sick. I had stomach cramps and nausea so bad it woke me up at 6:30am today, and by 10am I'd thrown up twice. By noon I'd thrown up a third time, although by then whatever was in my stomach was mostly gone, and I've just been left with an empty digestive system, mild stomach cramps, and nausea.

It sucks, because this was my day off and I'd planned to go to the gym, dye my hair, find a second-hand bookstore in Dunhua--just a lot of things, basically, but if I try to stand up I feel really nauseous again, and I refuse to throw up a fourth time. The first three times I helped along, mostly because I was afraid of food poisoning and wanted whatever it was in my stomach out. But now that I'm about to start eating food again, I want to be done with being sick. I hate throwing up more than any other symptom of illness there is. It's a horrific experience and although it was a necessary evil to get the crap out of my system, I want to be done with it.

I'm about to drink apple juice and eat crackers, and maybe keep it down. Wish me luck!