Very Painful Episode

One day after my previous post I suffered one of the worst gut attacks in recent memory.  It started around midday, after I'd swum a very invigorating mile in the pool.  I do my best to drink extra fluids after swimming, knowing that I'm at highest risk of dehydration and its discontents for several hours post-exercise.

Monday was not a successful eating day from the start (mistake #1), so I was quite hungry after swimming.  Against my own better judgment, I bought a Snickers bar at the vending machine and ate it (mistake #2) in the car on the way home.  Almost immediately it seemed to explode in my stomach.  Yet I was still hungry, so I ate the only thing I had in the car (mistake #3), which was a (rather stale) "Sweet & Salty Almond" Odwalla bar.  Last one in the box I keep in the car.  I've eaten tons of these in the past with not-too-terrible results.  But this time it just fuelled the explosion.  I drank a little more water.  This was mistake #4 -- I think I should have drunk a gallon more water!

Got home, pain kept getting worse, but I had to prepare to teach a Biblical Hebrew class in the evening.  And I was still hungry!  Figuring I had to eat something, and get it done a few hours before class so I wouldn't explode while teaching, I decided to whip up some matzah-ball soup.  Thinking it would be pretty safe, i.e., not too high in fat or fiber, I unthinkingly threw a large handful of wild rice into the pot, to make the soup more interesting and crunchy.  (My love of crunchy food is a big challenge to my jpouch.)

With my gut pain growing ever more acute, I ate a modest portion of soup -- enough to power me through my class without adding too much more to the fire in my belly.  Yes, the rice could have been cooked longer, but honestly I don't think I made things worse with this tiny meal.

I somehow managed to teach the class, 'though I could barely stand up straight due to the pain.  As I left the synagogue the pain was huge, which is very unusual.  Normally teaching Hebrew distracts me so delightfully that all pain goes away.  But not this time.

Back at home, it felt like I'd swallowed a giant chef's knife which was now slicing me up from the inside.  Eventually I couldn't move, couldn't walk, couldn't get to my phone in the bag where I'd dumped it near my front door.  My screaming and crying couldn't be heard by my landlords because all the windows were closed.  I lay there on my bed trying to decide whether this was a true emergency or not, and if yes, would it be too dangerous to try to drive myself to the hospital (located just across the way from where I'd been teaching, I realize now).

I couldn't bear the thought of choosing between driving dangerously vs. crawling to phone and calling landlord; then spending hours in the ER, for what would most likely be inconclusive results; and then being a basket case all day on Tuesday.  If my smart surgeon and GI docs can't figure it out, even after all the tests so far, why should I expect better from the ER?

Plus, I had a tutoring session scheduled for the next morning, and then a furniture-moving event in the evening that had taken me weeks to arrange, coordinating the schedules of four busy people.  I couldn't stand the idea of calling everyone expecting to see me and cancelling everything.  I've had to do that so many times these last few years!  It's almost the worst part of the whole ordeal.

The second-to-worst part is not knowing what the problem is or when it might strike, feeling so unclear about what I should or shouldn't do to avoid it.  Mistakes #1-4 above are things I often do on separate occasions, with no ill effects; basically I'm just guessing that the combination added up to this episode.  Since my pain profile is not obviously derived from the gallstones or from bowel obstruction, the treatment is non-obvious, too.  Makes me feel a bit jittery -- who knows when the knife in my gut will attack next?  How can I plan anything??

I made a guess based on experience that I would probably feel better after enough hours passed, by the time my student was due to arrive in the morning, and cried myself to sleep. 

Thank goodness I was right.  I woke up feeling almost normal, had a good tutoring session, moved lots of furniture around, drank lots of water, didn't cancel any plans, ate some more matzah balls with wild rice, and lived to tell the tale.

Today I was nearly pain-free, but didn't eat right again, so I was too scared of repeating the experience to go swimming again.  I think maybe I will go to the ER next time.