Sip, don't gulp

On Saturday I woke up with a splitting headache. It was no surprise, considering Dave and I had spent the night before drinking with some of his law school friends. I'll admit, I had six to seven glasses of wine within five hours of lively conversation and Thai food. When I went to bed and closed my eyes, the room was spinning  — much like the night in college when I drank too much cheap vodka and cranberry juice and kept tripping out on my friend's lava lamp as I tried to sleep it off on her futon.

I thought it was something to endure with liters of water and a fistful of Aleve, but when I still couldn't keep food down three days later and felt nauseous every time I tried to sit up, I knew I was dying. At least, that's what I told Dave to evoke more sympathy, which was more of a joke than anything considering he would sit behind me and rub my back every time I ran to the bathroom and threw up the yogurt, bananas and water crackers he tried to feed me.

I kept thinking I'd wake up and feel better, I mean how long can a hangover last? But by Monday, when I lay on the couch whimpering and sweating, my stomach burning and my head pounding, I called my doctor, who told me to go to the ER. The ER? Was that really necessary? Yes, she said. I needed fluids and tests.

I eased myself off the couch, took my first shower in three days and gingerly pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I called Dave at work to tell him where I was going and hailed a cab to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. For two and a half hours I sat in the packed waiting room with all of humanity.

An elderly man in a wheelchair had a gash on the top of his balding head. Another woman sat moaning over a plastic bucket she clutched in her lap. But my favorite was the drunk panhandler they had strapped to a wheelchair and parked near the flat screen TV. "Turn that down!" he yelled."I told you, turn that down," he said over and over. Apparently he hated "Everybody Loves Raymond" as much as I did.

An ER nurse finally called my name and took me back to a cold examining room (why are hospitals always freezing?), handed me a backless gown and told me to undress. She took my blood pressure, a vial of blood and hooked me up to a bag of saline. She was 30ish and slender, her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was also eight months pregnant.

"Please tell me this isn't what pregnancy feels like," I told her.

"Oh yeah," she said. "I was sick as a dog from 5 weeks to 15 weeks." (Pregnant ladies always talk in weeks, which always throws me off because I have to mentally divide by four to convert them to months for the time frame to mean anything.)

"Oh my God," I said. "And you were working here?"

In the waiting room, I'd had to move seats twice, once when a guy who reeked of smoke sat down next to me and the second time when they parked another drunk next to me who had a tube of urine peaking out from under the blanket on his lap. The smells made me even more nauseous, and I feared I would lose it right there in the waiting room. Why would anyone want to work here? I thought, as I watched the haggard hospital staff rush around attending to the sick and wounded. 

"Oh yeah," the nurse said. "It was awful. I had to run out of the room constantly to throw up."

Oh God. I couldn't imagine anything worse. 

Thirty minutes later the resident doctor showed up, asked me a stream of questions, poked around on my stomach and sat down on a chair to be at eye level with me and said I probably had gastritis — inflammation of the stomach lining. It wasn't the flu, he said, because I didn't have all the symptoms (I'll spare you the symptoms that were missing). The alcohol likely irritated my stomach lining, causing acids to build up and make me nauseous. I felt like a stupid college kid. Why the hell had I drunk that much?

On the list of foods to eat to soothe an upset stomach that Dave had downloaded from the Internet shortly after I fell sick, it said to avoid fatty, greasy or spicy food and steer away from sweets. It recommended eating clear-broth soups, oatmeal, rice, toast without butter, bananas and plain pasta. That seemed straightforward enough, even though I couldn't even keep those down. But then I got to the last paragraph:

Take small sips of clear liquids, such as 7-UP, Gatorade or ginger ale. SIP, DO NOT GULP. Larger amounts of fluids may cause you to vomit again.

That, for me, was the hard part. I'm not one who likes to sit around and sip my way through life. I walk fast, talk fast and eat dinner in three bites. I have to consciously remind myself to breathe and slow down, feel the pavement under my feet as I rush to the bus stop to get to work. I don't have to do everything at once. And what's the hurry anyway? Where do I think I'm going so fast?

That's why it's challenging for me to be sick. I don't like to slow down, which is really the only thing you can do to help it pass. Slow down and wait. And in this case, go to the ER and wait.

After getting fluids, anti-nausea medicine and drinking some God awful chalky antacid, I started to feel human again. By the time Dave joined me in the hospital room in his suit and tie from work, I was chatty and craving 7-UP. We sat for another three hours waiting for the results of my urine and blood tests, which I guess in the the end, was worth it.

Diagnosis: I wasn't dying, just dehydrated.