Today is a beautiful day, here inside my heart.
It's sunny. Cold. My poor son got food poisoning and is missing school and I won't lie, it's stressful and a bummer but both of us are also so goddamn relieved to not be dragging ass to school for many days at a time.
My son got a cold, very nasty one. After a week of nursing him back to almost not sickness, I got the cold, which is highly unusual- I rarely EVER get sick. Then I got a text from him saying he had gotten off the bus and vomited on the sidewalk. I thought it was a panic attack. After he jumped up from near sleep on the couch to run and throw up again an hour later, I knew it was no panic attack and started triage on him immediately. Within a few minutes, I'd narrowed it to something he ate, something a friend gave him at lunch.
He now knows that you should never eat a dairy item that someone else hasn't kept properly refrigerated.
Once I was sure he wasn't going to throw up again soon, I had him take six activated charcoal tablets with water. Six hours later, repeat the dose.
If you aren't familiar with activated charcoal,
learn about it now. It could just save your life.
He threw up overnight, just a little.
The next day I took him to the doctor, as he still had a high fever (well, he had a fever once the dose of Motrin or Tylenol wore off). What transpired next baffled me. The doctors didn't believe that he had food poisoning. In fact, because it was not coming profusely out both ends of him, they clearly thought I was bananas and clueless. I explained repeatedly that he had thrown it up, and THEN I gave him the activated charcoal. I further explained that there was nothing to come out the other end because he threw it up, and the activated charcoal absorbed the rest. What he was reacting to was simply the amount that had already started circulating his bloodstream before I gave it to him.
The doctor listened to me with a look of, "You delusional idiot," and announced, "This is the flu. Here, we'll do a swab, and the test will come back in a few minutes." The swabbing commenced, the doctor informed me of options to deal with the flu, and I gave him his expression back, "You delusional idiot."
The test came back, the doctor returned to the room and dazedly informed me, "The flu....well, it's negative... I, uh..." I shot my son an arched eyebrow of, "See? Told you so." He smiled conspiratorially at me.
Finally the doctor gave us a 'script for some anti nausea medicine, which is the most useful thing he did, and then looked perplexed again when I asked him for a note for the school. It wasn't till we got outside that I started laughing. My son asked why and I held out the note. It said, "Patient seen for illness."
*deadpan look* No shit, Sherlock.
On the way home, I told my son that he looked better than he had since he threw up, and noted that he had actually started smiling and doing a literal dance in the exam room (when the doctor wasn't in there) as soon as the doctor had seen him and announced it wasn't the flu and that he didn't know what it was. I told my son, "You feel better just knowing that a doctor has seen you and now you know there is nothing terrifying wrong with you, don't you?" He gave me a conflicted look. I said, "It's ok. Look, you don't always know that I know what I'm talking about, and that's ok. My experiences with food poisoning, both mine and other people's that I helped with, were before you were born or so young you wouldn't remember. It's ok that you had doubts. And it's ok that you feel better now. If that's all we gained from going, it was worth that alone." He smiled then, relieved.
After that, he was still eating popsicles crushed up and spoon fed, and eventually more solid foods. The anti nausea meds did help him a lot, mostly for his fear of puking up whatever he ate again. The best part of it all, for me, was how cuddly he became. You know a teenager is sick when he lays his head in your lap and just stays there. He was home for most of the week, and it was days before he even wanted to watch tv, much less get on his laptop. That, for a nearly sixteen year old boy, is mofo ILL.
I'm so glad I could save him the agony of a full blown case of food poisoning. Activated charcoal, people. Get some. You just never know, and you'll be glad you have it, just in case.