What Is An Expat?

Ok, so maybe you’ve read that I got a chance to visit the nice folks at the hospital a few weeks ago. Turns out I had an ulcer. I got two weeks worth of pills at 1 a day (plus Iron? dunno) and since I’m lazy, after another week or so I went back for the follow up.

I told the doc I was feeling much better, but my guts were still feeling like someone was squeezing them. The doc looks at me funny and requests further detail, as apparently ulcers make you sick but don’t hurt. Hmmm…uh oh. But it started that same night?

Well, long story not as long, it appears that I herniated myself while dry heaving due to the ulcer, and due to possible miscommunication and my ignorance of sickness in general I just dealt with it for 3 weeks for no apparent reason. Something else also became apparent while I was there that actually scared me more, but I will keep that to myself. It really damaged my day though, thinking that I’m 34 and my warranty must be out or something. (more…)

The Background:

Probably about 8 months ago, I had what I thought was food poisoning. Terrible sense of fullness up near my solar plexus, indigestion, not being able to burp enough up to make the pressure go away, diarrhea, and finally vomiting, which mercifully ended it in the early morning hours.

6 months or so after that pleasant experience, it happened again in the same exact way. That struck me as vaguely unusual.

About a month later, I had similar symptoms but at a much lower level, more discomfort than OMIGOSHIMDYING. I did some research, because I really don’t know all that much about being sick, and came up with heartburn. After 4-5 days of this, it got rather bad, with the severity of the two previous incidents. I hoped that the vomiting would come soon and put me out of my misery. This wasn’t so late in the evening and I thought I might even get a decent night’s sleep out of it instead of waking up in the middle of the night wanting to die. Well, dry heaving was about the closest I came to that. That’s when I really started to hurt, and I had to make the decision. (more…)