Written by Daniel Hatton
This one is a tiny bit graphic – sorry.
You really don’t appreciate feeling well until you don’t. We go about our daily lives not really thinking about how ok we feel, right up until the moment we come down with something. We all know that feeling, the one random slightly painful swallow that means we’re in for a week of tissues, cold medicine and reruns of our favourite series whilst we slowly become one with the sofa, longing for the days when you felt normal and not like something that crawled out of the ocean, struggling to take its first breaths of fresh air.
Or worse than that, the first grumble deep in the pits of your stomach that means you’re going to spend the next few days talking to the big white porcelain telephone or lying in bed with an old bowl on standby, just in case things start to erupt again whilst you try to get some sleep.
I know this feeling all too well because, as I’m writing this, I’m just getting over a horrible case of not being able to keep anything down for love nor money.
The worst part is it came on so suddenly. I was having a good day; I’d gotten a lot done in the morning and then spent the afternoon filming another episode of the Mercedes Hymer restoration for my MotorNerd YouTube channel. But whilst filming, I had that grumble, that single gurgle that felt different to the usual 'I haven’t eaten' gurgle. After putting the grumble in my tumble down to having had a light lunch, I carried on up until the nausea hit. We all know that feeling, the wave of queasiness that washes through us, the feeling of I need to sit down, and possibly run to the bathroom.
After that feeling, I knew something was wrong, and not long after heading home to rest, I erupted from both ends with such force I could be used as a multidirectional thruster on a spacecraft, only with a lot less control. At that point I was very much along for the ride whilst my body did its absolute darndest to eject whatever it was that had irritated it in the first place.
And now here I am five days later, still not back to eating properly, wondering what the heck it was that did that to me in the first place. I have a three-year-old son who goes to nursery, so maybe it was a bug from there or the soft play we take him to quite often, but it came on so quickly, so maybe it was something I’d eaten. But then again, it could just as easily have been my body being my body. Or maybe where it’s been so hot. It could have even been picked up whilst at work, where I do on occasion have to deal with other people’s bodily fluids. I guess at this point I’ll never know.
It amazes me really how there are so many things in the world that can make us ill. Every day we’re surrounded by thousands of bugs and things that can easily ruin the rest of our week’s plans. We’re at a point we can now treat most illnesses thanks to medical science. Some illnesses can be reversed with a few pills, and for others we have to sit and wait it out.
I will also say that last bug has scared me to the point where not only have I decided to change my diet, which before this was full of processed fats and all the other words Netflix documentaries use to scare you, so have decided to get back into my love of cooking and started making food fresh and learning to cook some new things. I’ve also decided I’m going to go everywhere in a hazmat suit while towing a decontamination station behind the car. I know what those novelty water fountains feel like, from both ends, and I really don’t fancy that again.