Sick Again (Day 21)

While everyone else is enjoying themselves up in the Irish mountains, I'm sitting in my hostel feeling not even close to 100%. I mentioned in my last post that I got food poisoning, something that I have never experience in my life and I hope to never experience again.

After shopping and walking around Dublin all afternoon I started to feel sick. We had eaten lunch around 3:30 or 4pm and had then bought gelato and some candy from a nearby mall. I thought for sure I only had a tummy-ache from the weird combination of things I had eaten, but around 7:30 I was feeling so sick that I walked back to the hostel on my own (only a few blocks from where I had been) so that I could sit down and rest before we went out to dinner.

When we left for dinner I thought that I was maybe feeling a bit better, but I ended up going to the bathroom because I thought I would get sick. When I didn't, I went back to my table and once my friends had paid for dinner I walked back to my hostel again to get ready for bed. And sure enough, right after I had put my pajamas on I got violently sick. I felt better afterwards so I thought I had just eaten something funny that needed to get out of my system, but about an hour later it happened again... and then I hardly slept because it happened more in the middle of the night.

I was worried I had the flu, which was about that last thing I wanted - but when my stomach had completely emptied itself of everything in the early hours of the morning, I finally fell asleep. Our alarms went off at 7 o'clock, and I walked down the reception to call our trip coordinator from the phone at the desk. (The poor receptionist didn't really know how to react to my disheveled appearance, much less the information I disclosed over the phone.) I told him how I felt and when he showed up with our professors to get everyone loaded on the bus for the day they all insisted that I hang back, which I think was an excellent decision since I took almost a 4 hour nap when I went back to my room. One of them ran down the street to grab me snacks quickly, which have helped a ton.

I've slowly but surely been drinking, eating and putting nutrients back into my system. Hopefully by the time everyone gets back in the next few hours I'll be feeling a bit better.

I've named myself the struggle child of this trip, and it's not a title that I'm proud of. I don't think I'll be eating Chinese for a long time...

(On a brighter note, I get to see two of my cousins tomorrow and I couldn't be more excited!)