Yup.
A full fledged, hanging over the toilet, both ends going food poisoning.
It has been a long-time since I've had anything remotely this bad, going back to Vietnam in 2016 (and we suspect that was a virus, and not food poisoning).
Last week Monday, I had lunch at the office. When I'm in Ghana I usually buy lunch for the team so we can all be in the office more. I had ordered Groundnut (peanut) Soup, something I've had many times before. It didn't taste that great so I didn't really eat much of it.
That night it hit me, full force. I was so wiped out that on Tuesday I sent #2 to the Theodora meetings alone. I did nothing but drink hot water. I got a reasonable night's sleep which was good because we had to get up early in the morning to fly to Tamale. At the airport, I was hungry but afraid to eat. We did end up buying something and I didn't suffer any ill effects. In Tamale, I had local food again for lunch, again without any ill effects.
But on Thursday, suddenly things went wrong. I started to have intense acid burning in my stomach whenever I ate. At first, I thought it was a reaction to spicy food. But with some experimentation, it turned out to be anything, a piece of bread, a bowl of corn flakes, it didn't make a difference. And the effect was just after I age, it would last for hours.
By this weekend, I was getting really concerned. I was doing my usual travel triage of starting to look for local MD referrals through our travel insurance app and composing messages to my home MD. I decided to try a couple more efforts to control the situation on the theory that I was producing too much acid in my stomach. I decided to get a very powerful acid reducer, Nexium, which I've used before with excellent results. And I got some unpasteurized yogurt.
Happily I can report that they seem to have done the trick. Today I was able to eat normally without a sign of the issues I'd had previously.
Which is good because I'm off to Kumasi tomorrow for another step in expanding our Rotary EDI program.
3 comments:
Ugh! It is so, so awful to get sick when you are far from home and not near a doctor (or medical system) you know. I'm glad you are feeling better.
So glad you're feeling better! That was very persistent food poisoning. And no one else in the office got it?
No one else ordered the groundnut soup. They know better.
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