Be Nice, New Year

This is me literally begging 2024 not to take me out barely 4 weeks in.

Alright so we’re four weeks into the new year, and I’m not enjoying 2024, but it is what it is, and it’s going to be what it’s going to be.

I didn’t expect that I would spend the last three weeks deathly ill, but the whole shitty saga started on the 9th when I came down with food poisoning.

I thought I could ride it out, but by evening I was experiencing stabbing pains in my stomach and chest, as I sat on the toilet trying to shit out whatever was trying to kill me, and last April, I actually and very seriously almost died from the worst food poisoning of my life — I had to call 911. I was delirious, confused, unable to stand without falling, and almost passed out right as the paramedics burst through the door to see me collapsed in a massive pool of vomit — so I wasn’t taking any chances this time, and I decided to go to the doctor on DAY ONE.

I came back from the hospital the same day with a prescription of antibiotics, which I dutifully completed for seven days without incident.

That is, until the last day.

Literally no sooner had I swallowed the last pill of Amoxicillin, than I started feeling a familiarly sinister bloating in my upper stomach.

NO FUCKING WAY am I getting food poisoning on the last day of me completing a course of antibiotics that I had been prescribed to kill the last food poisoning I was barely recovered from.

But that was exactly what was happening.

Hello stomach my old friend…

I’ve come to poison you again…

I couldn’t believe I was that unlucky, but like clockwork, by the next day, not only was I shitting my guts out, this time there was a horrible new symptom.

Allow me to introduce you to… nonstop projectile vomiting.

I vomited. And vomited. And vomited. And vomited. And vomited.

I vomited all the food I had eaten.

I vomited all the food that had digested.

Then when I had nothing else to vomit, I vomited all my stomach acid and bile.

I vomited so hard, my whole body shook, and all I could think desperately was “no more, please no more”

But when I started vomiting brown specks of blood?

I jumped up from my sick bed (or should I say sick couch because by this time I was permanently camped on the couch leaning over a basin to vomit), and hauled my ass to the hospital, even though we literally had to stop for me to vomit into a bag, and also out the door when we stopped in traffic.

I came back from the hospital after a day of extensive testing and a CT scan of my abdomen and chest, feeling horrible. For the next three days, I kept vomiting, but thankfully less with each passing day.

Just when I thought I was finally well enough to actually keep something down after discovering I lost over six pounds in just two days, another wretched set of symptoms presented themselves.

Besides pain, cramping, bloating and discomfort whenever I tried to eat even food that had been chewed into a liquid mush, I developed chest pain and breathing became very unpleasant and very deliberate, which as you can imagine, feels like hell.

I wouldn’t be an award winning, Olympic gold medal hypochondriac if I didn’t immediately trampoline to the absolute worst case scenario, so two weeks after the initial food poisoning, convinced all that horrific vomiting had caused a Boerhaave’s Syndrome rupture in my oesophagus, I set off to the hospital emergency room for the third time.

To be fair I was in a lot of pain and I actually could not breathe nor eat.

Even drinking water was a little painful.

This time I had a chest X-ray, and now I’m back home with instructions to see my doctor about a referral to a pulmonary specialist, but most importantly, it was not a ruptured oesophagus, and I’m very grateful for that.

I’m feeling better now but not yet back to hundred percent.

Unsurprisingly, my compliance to my new year routine and resolutions took a beating.

I couldn’t get out of bed for days with how sick I was.

The bright side though, is that though I was really worried that I wouldn’t get better in time and miss it, I did manage to feel better enough in time to start Art School this week, so very big deal. At least to me.

Not all smiles though, because although I made it to my first class, I developed some breathing problems during my second class (Figure Drawing), and I had to excuse myself to go to the Emergency Room.

This honestly made me so sad because after everything I having my art school application dumped in the trash when I tried to apply to Art School as a teenager, the fact that I finally am able to fund an art education for myself is such a major milestone to me, and I hate being unwell, and in that moment I just felt like, why can’t this good thing just happen for me with no hitches?

I’m trying to take it on the chin and just push through though.

I got a rescue inhaler and made it back to class the next day, even though I didn’t feel like it, and unexpectedly I had a great time!

This is already really long, so I think I’ll do another post just focused on starting art classes and what it’s been like so far.

Hope your week was a lot better than mine!!

XOXO

Lotanna