Greg In The Desert

On Thursday a week ago I went into work and had an large ice tea. I went to Dion’s for lunch (I am not blaming Dion’s for the following, it is very unlikely it had anything to do with them) and had a sandwich. I went home for the rest of the day and had water and some homemade soup while I worked on my house.

Friday morning I woke up about 7 am to go to the bathroom. No problems during the transaction and I went back to bed. At 8:21 am I woke up and looked at the clock and thought it was strange I was dizzy. Then I could feel I going to throw up.

I ran to the bathroom and spent about two hours at the toilet. I had no food in my stomach yet I experienced uncontrollable vomiting. I was extremely dizzy. I was sweating more liquids than I was vomiting and was freezing cold. I became disoriented.

The disorientation is hard to explain but my brains ability to tell which way is up or down was gone. It’s kind of like when a picture is turned on it’s side and it’s difficult to make out until the picture is rotated correctly.

Sometime during my marathon vomiting session I had to go to the bathroom. I managed to get myself up on the toilet and continue to vomit nothing into the tub. Crapping my pants wouldn’t have helped the situation. I am very thankful that didn’t happen.

After about two hours of what felt like a month I managed to stagger my way back to the bedroom. I was still vomiting but I had nothing to vomit so I wasn’t making a mess. It took a lot of concentration and stillness to get my vomiting to stop. Meanwhile I was still dizzy and cold. It was at this point that I considered calling an ambulance but I finally stopped vomiting and I didn’t want to start again by moving.

I managed to text a friend after a while, something about “HELP”. They brought me some crackers and electrolyte liquid. The throwing up stopped about noon on Friday and I spend the next two days eating crackers and mostly drinking water and electrolyte liquids. And sleeping.

Over the next week I had little appetite and it even seems like I forgot what hungry was. I had to force myself to eat real food. I also had body aches and headaches to suffer with.

I’m sure I had salmonella poisoning. I couldn’t be the flu since I didn’t experience a sore throat, coughing, sneezing, fever and other flu like symptoms. I could be pregnant but that seems unlikely.

I was already on the weight loss path due to lifestyle changes (as in I’m not dieting) and I can attribute at least 5 lbs of weight loss to the food poising. Although it was nice to get a boost in weight loss I absolutely cannot recommend this method.

Some people in a Rio Rancho neighborhood hit by a water main break on Sunday are saying that the city isn’t doing its part to assure that they have clean, drinkable water. “It’s just getting really old,” said Renee Popovich, a homeowner near Rockaway and Pyrite in northeast Rio Rancho. “We’re not getting any support from the city to provide at least drinking water for the residents.” Popovich said that her children had to spend the night with friends so they had water to get ready for school on Monday morning. The break carved out a mini arroyo in front of several homes leaving people unable to back their cars out of their driveways. Rio Rancho officials say that they are aware of the problem and have recently removed asphalt over the water main in preparation for repairing the faulty pipes, which have failed several times in recent months.

The city came and fixed the water main break in front of my house pretty quickly. This break seems much worse than mine which might be part of the problem. Perhaps the city should do a better job of communicating to the residents the problems in fixing this and how long it’s going to take so it doesn’t end up on the news. Just sayin’.