Listen to Your Body

                                               
                                                   

Sometimes, it is difficult to tell if your body is actively trying to help you or just trying to mess with your head. After I had Salmonella, my metabolism seemed to be completely out of sync. I never knew what reaction I would have to different foods.Sometimes, it would make me sick. Sometimes, it would give me diarrhea. The same foods didn't always react the same way.

Then one day, I got the urge to eat a baked potato with cottage cheese on top. No one advised me to do it. I didn't read about it on Doctor.com. I'd never eaten that combination before. It tasted delicious and it kept tasting delicious. In the next three months, I ate baked potatoes with cottage cheese every day. Lots of baked potatoes and cottage cheese. 

When my friend came to visit me from Iowa, she asked what kind of hostess give I'd like to have and I said, "bring me ten pounds of potatoes." 

"Are you kidding? We were thinking of a nice bottle of wine."

"Nope" I told her, "potatoes, please." 

Eventually my friends knew not to come see me unless they brought a container of cottage cheese with them. 

After a couple of months, I added chocolate pudding (not instant - yuck!) for dessert.

By now, my digestive system is back to normal. My taste for other foods has returned.

But why did this happen? Did my body know something I didn't know about getting myself back in order and guide me in that direction? I have no clue. All I know is baked potatoes and cottage cheese were what I craved and kept craving for over three months until I was well.

I guess the moral of this story is that your body and your mind can be a mystery but just maybe they know what they need to heal themselves. Don't fight it. Eat the baked potatoes and cottage cheese (or whatever), just in case.

Lizards, Frogs, Turtles and Snakes!

I think I am finally completely over my Salmonella. It is rather ironic that for all the worrying (not that I worry all that much) about lung cancer and congestive heart failure, it was Salmonella that almost killed me off. I honestly thought I was dying when I came home from the hospital. I didn't call any of my friends because I assumed they'd over-react and want to call an ambulance. I figured I'd rather just die at home.

I got well oh-so-gradually. One day, there was the tiniest bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Day by day, it got larger until I'm back to normal (whatever "normal" is!)

The Health Department takes Salmonella very seriously and I had to do a lengthy interview about where I might have got mine. It turned out I hadn't done any of the things that usually cause it - no restaurant food, no handling raw chicken, no salad fixings in a sack, no pre-cut-up melon (and wash melons first even when you buy them whole as if there is Salmonella on the outside, the knife can carry it inside) So maybe it could have been eggs or perhaps leftovers kept too long.

In the end, she simply told me to keep my fridge between 3.5 and 4. And not to eat at buffets. And to not let foods touch each other. And  not to refill plastic water bottles more than once. She told me to always use a mask and gloves when changing the cat's litter boxes or touching bird feeders. And finally, she said not to handle turtles, frogs, snakes and lizards.

I told her I thought I could promise that last one pretty easily!

As for the rest, I started out being extremely cautious and following all her advice but gradually, I have gotten more lax. I don't eat cut up fruit or lettuce or handle raw chicken but I don't worry with masks and gloves. I'd eat at a buffet. I do look at the sell-by date on eggs but you never really know how long they may have set out in a store or warehouse. I only keep leftovers two days.

If you're a healthy adult, you probably don't have to worry. If you do get Salmonella, you'll probably just get well with time. But it can be deadly for the elderly and children. In my case, by the time I went to the Emergency Room my kidneys were in urgent crisis and I was completely dehydrated.

So if your elderly parent or child gets what seems like the flu and it goes on longer than a couple days, make sure to have it checked. I am here to tell you, Salmonella is wicked stuff!

On the other hand, you can't go through life being anal about protecting yourself from every possibility. Like most things, it's mostly a matter of commonsense.

I Just Wanna' Go Home!

                                                     

(Repeat of my Logansport column to explain why I haven't been here for so long)

I haven't been around for a while because I've been sick...probably as sick as I've ever been in my life. I thought I had the flu. I thought it would run it's course but six days later, there was no improvement. I had constant diarrhea, vomiting, aching, felt as if I was freezing. So I took myself to the emergency room, thinking I'd get a shot and a prescription and be on my way.

All the people at the Wabash Parkview Hospital were great but having said that, I had a few complaints. I spent six hours in the emergency room. No one’s fault. The hospital was full. They had to discharge patients to make room for new patients.

I tried to look at the bright side. At least, the bed in my room would be soft unlike the ER cot. Ho. Ho. Ho. How wrong I was. A modern hospital bed looks like a marvel of modern technology. It has enough bells and buttons and whistles to be the control panel for the Starship Enterprise. The head goes up; the feet go down. You can twist your body into a donut. You can summon nurses. You can turn lights off and on. The one thing you can’t do is lay flat no matter how you play with the icons. If you’re short, like me, your feet don’t touch the mattress. They hang out into space.

And there is a drop off in the middle where the bed bends. It exactly fits the shape of your derriere. No matter how I moved in the bed, I fell into this hole. My posterior was already rather sensitive after six days of “flu-like symptoms” (to be politically correct about it). The last thing I wanted was to concentrate on that part of my anatomy but there it fell, inevitably, nestling into its slot.

Because of various humps in various places, you cannot lay on your side in a hospital bed.

Honestly, I believe, with only slight modifications, this apparatus could be used as a means of enhanced interrogation.

To make matters worse, I could only move a few feet from the dreaded bed because of the intravenous pole. They didn’t want me to go to the bathroom by myself but they were too busy, so I didn’t even bother them, I just went. But my i.v. lines kept getting tangled so that I could barely reach the stool. There I’d be, perched on the very edge, hoping I was hitting the mark, with my arm extended to its maximum length in order not to pull out my i.v.

Lastly, of course, was not smoking. They applied nicotine patches. Someone asked me if they helped and I said, “I guess they must, I haven’t killed anyone, have I?”

The non-smoking Vicki exerted iron self-control in order not to take my stress out on the staff. (I think my nurses would agree that over all, I was a cooperative patient) but I dreamed of doing harm to others in order to steal their cigarettes.

I loved my doctor, Dr. Gupta. I begged him to let me go home. He said he would not release me until he thought I was ready to go.

He told me that, of course, I had the option of checking myself out against his strong recommendation and then he said, “and when you come back in two days, sicker than before, we’ll welcome you back.”

I told him, “well, Doc, when you put it like that, I guess I’ll stay.”

He nodded. “Good thinking.”

I’m home now. with a new appreciation for coffee, cigarettes, computers, long soaky baths and the freedom to move freely.

Update: the following week, I had to go to the lab for some tests. My clinic almost immediately called back and said my magnesium levels were dangerously low. Magnesium? Who knew it was so important. They told me to go to ER a.s.a.p..

They first said they’d have to admit me overnight because it took several hours for a magnesium infusion but I refused. Finally, they agreed to do it my way and hooked me up in the Emergency Room. Four hours later, I went home.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the hospital and the hospital staff. I hope they didn’t think I was just being a witch but I feel so strongly that if I’m going to die (and I don’t know that that’s imminent), I want it to be at home....in my own bed, not in the hospital.