Weekend Wrap-up

Alrighty so the name of the game for this past weekend was sickness and foolish pseudoscience. We all know #scienceishard but I decided based on what was happening that I would try my hand at some not-so-clinical studies. What am I talking about? Let me explain. We all read that I foolishly ordered pizza on Friday and it made me feel like garbage while I slogged through the season of Ray Donovan that I was consuming. The condition didn't go away with sleep, it got worse. I didn't really eat any breakfast because my gastrointestinal system was going haywire. It was mostly just a severe and lingering pain, almost felt like an inflammation in my small intestines, or more precisely two midgets having a dagger fight in my belly. Which, as you may have guessed is probably not a good thing. I writhed in pain on my bed for the last few remaining hours of the season. Then I made another fatal error. What should you eat when you have a sore tummy? Well, it's pretty subjective but I can tell you what I should not have eaten, Junior Chicken samidges from McDonald's chased with a Cadbury Creme egg McFlurry. Mistakes were made. Two of three consecutive meals were bad choices and the third was worse because I chose to eat nothing at all. So not helping the cause. But that fast food rapidly deteriorated my guts. It got rough down there. I had to maintain certain postures to avoid the stinging pain. It was about this point when I started to fear that all the cheese on the pizza and then ice cream were signs of an intolerance to dairy. Then I thought, what if it was gluten? This Big T style spiraling out of control with negative theories led me to have just white rice for dinner, with only tap water. Things naturally started to ease off at this point, only further driving my mind to theorize to wild conclusions. I was already planning what radical turns my lifestyle would take. Sleep seemed to soothe my ailments this time. But I woke early Sunday morning to some targeted aches and pains in my back and a general soreness had settled over my guts. Recall that Friday had been a triumphantly pleasant day? I happily whistled all morning! Unfazed, I went to buy my food and on the way home stopped at McDonald's, working with the concept that their breakfast has usually been a cure for my various issues of the past, particularly alcohol related ones. This time I felt like the gluten and dairy must have teamed up to destroy me. I was sure, as I clutched my belly and rolled to and fro in a stupor watching my stories, that one of those beasts were to blame for my current predicament. The frequent trips to this golden arched hellhole not withstanding. So for the rest of the day I sought to test which factor was responsible. I started with a neutral meal, bean with bacon soup. Things felt better. I had reached a manageable baseline pain level to begin testing. I started with the dairy free, gluten test number one - a ham sandwich, sans cheese. After an hour this had not caused additional discomfort. At this point the secondary test commenced. Dairy free, gluten test number two - pasta with red sauce. No ill effects after a waiting period with this test. So I cleansed my palette with a banana and moved on to the gluten free, dairy testing. Phase one would be to drink half of my 750mL container of chocolate milk, wait 45 minutes and then administer the remainder. No additional discomfort or real change from those tests either. This led me to conclude that I remained free of any dietary restrictions besides the hatred of onions and pickles. Sound science? Not even close! But it did settle me down mentally and got me started on the long road to recovery. Although I know I have some digestion issues currently, I'm confident I can move past them if I can avoid pizza for the next two weeks or so. I want to be ship shape for my trip afterall.