Why i'll never eat another chicken nugget (for a few years)

I'm in the process of clearing my old blog and moving anything of mild interest into this one space.

July 26th, 2006.

Current mood:drunk

(I'm taking a creative writing class, we had to write about being ill. Not that this is really all that creative, well in parts it is... but all the same i kinda like it. Viva la Gemma)

Mid May 2001, the UK was having a heatwave that is typical of that time of year. After a 16 mile bus ride home from my college in Stratford Upon Avon I was wilted from the heat and my stomach rumbled due to a missed lunch. When the weather was that lovely, a trip down to sit next to the river Avon and buy an ice lolly was way more enjoyable than refectory food.

I swung open the door of our small fridge-freezer, way smaller than anything even allowed onto US soil. I bent down to look in it, taking in it's refreshing chill for a couple of moments and giving zero regard to the energy bill. The open fridge really was quite the pitiful sight. Apart from some pickles, soggy lettuce and moldy cheese, it was empty.

Shoes, handbags, dresses and records i have no problem with but food shopping I find a total chore.

I flip the snap shut door on the ice box at the top of my tiny little fridge. "Ooh!" Thankfully here i have a little more luck. I pull out a bag of frozen mixed vegetables and a bag of chicken nuggets. No, not exactly fine gourmet dining, or actually anything i remotely fancied, but it was food.

I got to cooking my vegetables and the throughly delicious, processed chicken bits. When it was ready it looked so unappetizing i didn't even want it. My head said "urggh" but my stomach didn't say anything but instead churned and moaned. My belly won this debate so i set about eating.

I remember the first bite of one of them nuggets, i recall it tasting somewhat different but not being half as bad as i had anticipated so off they all went to my stomach.

It got to around 8pm and my boyfriend called me like he did every night we weren't together. We talked about how each others days had been, nothing exciting or different to what we had said to each other the day before, or the day before that but what i do remember is how akin to a gas leak my breath smelt during that conversation.

I am a being that thrives on habit and my nightly ritual back then always consisted of a glass of orange juice before bed. Why? I don't really know. However that night, i just couldn't drink it. 11pm came and I turned out my lamp. The juice sat beside my bed growing warm and thick in the stickiness of a British summer time night.

Not so much an annoying beeping of an alarm, but more a feeling similar to a hard, angry kick in the stomach by a 300 pound man in steel toe capped boots woke me a few short hours later. In the fetal position i lay in my bed. Mouth open in shock, eyes screwed up shut, my face totally contorted. It was hard to believe how much pain i was in. I blinked hard, trying to actually decide if this was even happening. I shuffled to my bathroom, completely hunched over reduced to half my size, griping my stomach.

I had never felt pain so crippling. I still couldn't believe this was happening. I get to the toilet, which I didn't actually need but i knew something inside me was most definitely wrong and there were 2 ways of getting it out out of me. I wanted to and had to try one of them. At least.

It may have been the middle of the night but those next few minutes, let me tell you, they were no dream.

I get back into my bed, feeling the weakest i have ever done, still sore around my stomach though slightly eased from my bathroom escapades. I drift off into a light uncomfortable clammy sleep only for round two of "bacteria gone wild" inside my usually pretty robust gut to kick off again.

I feel that shaky, odd numbness and the tingle of the face that I know only means one thing. I fumble in the dark, knocking over a pile of photos and the orange juice trying to get a hold of my waste paper bin. I undergo 3 vigorous painful vomit hurling sessions into my, luckily pretty empty bin. My stomach feels exhausted, very sore - almost stretched out - but now thankfully empty.

I go down to the utility room to clean out the trash can with some hot water and bleach. I let my dog into the garden, he wags his tail and looks up at me. He is super pleased that as I scrape my vomit into a heavy duty trash bag, he gets to frolic on the dewy grass. I get to the bottom of the bin and i see a picture of me and my friends with a film of vomit over it smiling at me. I didn't smile back.

I spent the next day napping, burping a rancid stinking rotten egg like smell and getting phone calls every hour from the boyfriend who wanted to check i was fine but who was actually really annoying me as to get up and answer the phone was the last thing i wanted to do. Besides every time i moved, for want of a better expression, i almost shit myself.

It got to around 10pm and after a day of being completely off i really needed a shower. I get in the tepid water and i hurl up what can only be described as the lining of my stomach, yellow and hot. The rotten egg smell that has been making me nauseated all day long now swirling down the plug hole.

As soon as i'm out of the shower I resume sweating. I sweated more that day than i ever have done in my life, my hair for the first and only time ever was thick with grease, lank and stuck to my head. I crawled into bed, desperate to put the day to an end. I drifted off to a calm sleep, weak and pathetic from every orifice on my body working over time trying it's hardest to rid me of the evil that was ravaging me from the inside - off chicken nuggets.