WomensStuff

A few years ago, with New Year's Eve. Got nausea all of a sudden, projectile vomitted six times in a row. Was hospitalised and apparently I might've had a bacterial infection. When brought home I was feeling hot and cold constantly in switch, and I felt like dying. Recovery thankfully was fast, but four days of dying isn't fun.

I ate expired pork once and I became acutely ill, ended up on the floor at work and felt like I might die. I ended up vomiting and eventually coming to. Luckily nobody at work found me on the floor, and I just kept working like nothing happened.

Norovirus 10 years ago. I was almost hallucinating at one point 0/10 would not recommend

Funny story, I went to A&E (British ER) with an upset tummy. The triage nurse asked me how much out of 10 it hurt, I said a five because I could still stand up and see straight, and it wasn't as bad as my normal period, so she told me to sit in the waiting area until they had a free doctor.

I sat down, and about 5 minutes later threw up a load of blood and passed out on the floor.

Woke up the next day after emergency surgery, apparently I had an ulcer that had torn or something and I was digesting myself.

Now I can't eat spicy food, ho hum.

Protip: if you have to have a top-down endoscopy and they say the medication to help you relax is optional, do opt for it - it's like deep-throating a drainpipe. In a bad way.

I got diagnosed with celiac a few years ago. Mostly I do ok at avoiding gluten - I research restaurants, read reviews, and am clear chen I order food that they can't have gluten. However about a year ago, I was at a fancy casino resort that didn't get great safety reviews. I talked to the staff who seemed confident they could accommodate me. Unfortunately, I got gluten at dinner, then again at breakfast, which resulted in bloody diarrhea immediately, a 4 day migraine, a week of digestive issues, and months of brain fog. It sucked.

From a virus? I used to work retail and I would get head colds very often. Sometimes they hit me like a ton of bricks. This was pre-Covid and I used to go to work like that, it is so gross to me now, but I also desperately needed the paycheck. My first round of Covid was pretty bad too, I was really sick and the virus gives me hives.

From a non-virus? When I spent 9 months waiting to see if my kidney could bounce back after a really bad injury. It didn’t get better. I had to have it removed because it was making me horribly sick, I couldn’t eat anything without feeling nauseous, and it was essentially poisoning my body. I dropped so much weight that my friends started commenting and I would force myself to eat multiple veggie and fruit smoothies, just sips here and there all day long if I had to, just so I could get some nutrients.

I had shingles when I was in my early thirties. The only places you could see rash was inside my eye and on my arm on my left side. The first med gave me an extremely rapid heartbeat. The second one worked, but it screwed with my mental health. I wish I could describe it, there are a few published articles about the neurological side effects. Of course then there was the pain and discomfort of shingles, lol. When the doctors call their friends to look, it’s not great but you know. There were a couple hospital visits involved. Things have never been quite the same.

Either from Covid where I was barely conscious for 2 weeks straight. Think I was awake for like 40 minutes in an entire day at one point. Those 40 minutes were filled with me coughing so hard I was seeing things. Also trying to stay awake just to use the bathroom or eat something was almost impossible. Really sucked.

The only other thing that comes to mind is when I was in 6th grade. That winter I had strep throat 6 times i believe. I would catch it, recover and then a few days later would catch it again. Strep throat also knocked me out for a majority of the days I was sick. Having to stay awake at the doctor’s office was so hard. Haven’t had strep throat since thankfully, was a miserable time.

When I first came to China I hit the disease gradient like a massive concrete wall. (What's the disease gradient? Well germs are constantly mutating so there's new variations of every known disease that haven't reached where you live yet so your body has extra work to fight them off until your immune system figures out their antibodies.) It started as a scratchy throat in the morning and ended by evening with me in hospital with a fever that exceeded 40°C (that's "brain damage is a risk" levels of fever here). The doctors were doing everything in their power to lower that temperature (including even using chilled saline drip) as my body, having its defences weakened by the first little throat-scratching collapsed in the fight against every unknown germ that decided to have a party in me.

That was probably the closest I got to death from disease.

Covid was bad - one of the earlier delta variants. Somehow managed to catch it outside in the fresh air, was barely functional for about a week.

I once got a horrid stomach bug when at uni, d&v for ages, couldn't keep anything in. I remember watching the entire extended lord of the rings from my bed in some kind of delerium with my flatmate bringing me orange squash every so often.

I've been hospitalised twice. Kidney stone was unbareable pain that no amount of twisting or movement could shift. It passed in A&E when I got fluids via drip and it came out in the toilet. Second time was a gall stone, I was actually scared it was a heart attack or something as it mostly felt like my chest tightening, it wasn't localised like the kidney stone. That got me taken to A&E in an ambulance after 111 called one for me. First time I've ever had proper pain medication in the form of morphine. No idea what happened to it, pain went away gradually and I got sent home with some codeine, an ultrasound later on didn't find it.

There was one bout of flu back in the late 80s or early 90s where I seriously considered going to the hospital. Even when I got Covid it wasn't quite as bad as that.

I haven't had anything too serious, but I did get strep throat so bad I didn't eat for a day once