One Christmas, as I was just getting over a flu that had me bedridden and weak for days, I went to visit my wife's
parents. Before the three hour car trip we at at KFC. I had chicken, the wife had mini chicken sandwiches.
I did not know until that day that food poisoning takes about two hours to set in. It hit when I was two hours from home, an hour from our destination. The last 'hour' was more like two hours because I had to stop at each and every gas station for a bathroom break.
The chicken was tainted. The mini-sandwiches, having virtually no trace of actual chicken, kept my wife safe.
Weeks later, my stepfather wrote a poem in my honor over this, bored at work. One stanza went like this:
And yes, he did vomit.
All over the car.
The window was up.
It did not go far.
At this point, I did not realize yet what was going on. I had just gotten over the flu --vomiting and a lot of time in the bathroom. Food poisoning=vomiting and lots of time in the bathroom. Both come on suddenly. I assumed I had relapsed.
We got to my wife's parents, and the house was packed full of people who did not want to get within 50 feet of the
flu carrying leper. I was confined to the basement watching TV while the revellers reveled.
That night it felt like I was getting stabbed in the stomach. Unable to handle the pain, I was taken to the ER. Merry Xmas
Eve!
The doctor, noting that I have no fever, and having poked and prodded sufficiently, informed me that I had gastritus (sp?), which is a fancy way of saying 'food poisoning' if you want to appear smarter than you are.
I asked what he could give me for the pain. He said 'nothing'. Not even tylenol. My system needed to rid itself of the tainted food and painkillers cause constipation and interfere with digestion. I needed to eat a lot of bran and only drink (and these were his exact words) "only things that you could hold up in a glass and still need a newspaper through".
Site note: Absolut Vodka fit that description, but I wasn't going to do that to myself.
The next day people would talk to me since I was not a leper anymore, and I sat at a beautiful turkey dinner --my favorite meals in the world --and munched on dry bran cereal without milk and watched everyone feast.
The moral: Cockroaches in your fast food? Don't sweat it. It's not the big bugs that you have to worry about, it's the little ones!