According to the C.D.C. Salmonella causes one million
foodborne illnesses in the United States, with 19,000 hospitalizations and 380
deaths every year. I was part of the one million, but I thought for sure I was
a 380. In fact, I did go to the hospital after an eight-day battle with an unknown
sickness, but by the time the Doctor called me with a diagnosis a week later,
it had run its course.
I had plans to help Sara load hay bales onto a trailer for
her horses to eat. I was not allowed to eat the hay, but I did and it didn’t
taste very good. That’s not how I contracted the disease. It was far more
sinister.
So there was a shit-covered goat, or maybe a lamb, in a
pasture. I mean this thing looked like it was dying because it probably was. I
thought it looked cute so I decided I should pet it. I like animals, even ones
that are covered in feces and some sort of slime. Needless to say, I went about
the task without washing my hands, and at some point something entered my
mouth, and inevitably my insides. I had no clue what I was in for.
The following morning, I woke up at Sara’s house and I had
to run to the toilet. Diarrhea exploded from my backside, and vomit from my
front. Either my butt or my mouth was in a trash can or a toilet, I cannot be
certain in which order. I would long for the days of diarrhea after that, as I was not able to
produce a B.M. for the following ten days.
I was driven home where I had one more day off of work, and
I thought I would recover from yet another bout of alcohol poisoning. What I found
strange was a pain in my guts that seemed to come and go in waves. Roughly
every ten minutes a wave would crash down and I would roll around on the floor
in agony. I would then crawl to the bathroom where I would sit on the toilet
and produce a teaspoon of transparent gelatinous feces. It didn’t matter how
hard I tried, or how long I waited, nothing more would come out. I decided to
go on the standard flu diet of ramen and Gatorade. What I didn’t know until
recently is that you should try to maintain a normal diet if you have
Salmonella because it helps push it through your system. What I was doing was
very dangerous, and in the end I lost a lot of weight and became slightly
delusional from severe dehydration. This is exactly how people die.
For the first time in my working career, I called into work
with the very real excuse of being sick. Day after day I called and gave the
same story-- couldn’t walk, I couldn’t poop, and I wanted to die.
There’s another problem I’ve mentioned several hundred times
in the course of my writing, I was having some troubles not drinking alcohol.
At this stage in my life I relied heavily on beer to get me through my day to
day life. My body or maybe my brain noticed the difference immediately and told
me I needed to drink soon or I would continue shaking and sweating, I was torn
by my need to survive, and my need to sustain. I drank a beer, and it was
enough to stop the tremors.
Somewhere around day three, I informed my friends of my condition
and they came over in shifts to help me live. For the most part that just meant
sitting and talking to me. Smoking weed helped my appetite but I was still
afraid to eat because I was under the impression that I wouldn’t be able to
process things and I would have tremendous difficulty passing them. But I still
wasn’t willing to go to a Doctor.
This was an important time of year for the friends group of
friends. This was hunting season and Thanksgiving, both of which I was sick
through. I made an attempt at hunting one morning. The plan was to go to Sara’s
family hunting shack to sleep, and get up early to hunt. There was one problem
I discovered upon entering that would make things a little difficult for me,
there was no toilet…
To be continued.
