My Sudden Illness (Don’t Worry, I’m Okay)

“Health is not valued till sickness comes.” ~ Thomas Fuller (1608 – 1661), English churchman.

Anti-nausea paraphernalia: https://ebay.us/E7kHlX

It’s true. We don’t appreciate our health until we get sick. And the other day, I was the sickest I’ve ever been. It all started when my wife ordered some liangpi (literally, “cold skin”) noodles from Sunnybank in Brisbane. (Just as a note, it wasn’t the noodles that caused me to get sick, but bear with me). I like them. They’re a kind of thick, rice noodle served cold with cucumber, sesame, and chilli oil. Anyway, I ate the whole lot that night and felt fine. But after a few hours of sleep, the stomach pains started coming. I was up and down all night going to the toilet, I suspect due to their MSG content. (Anytime I eat too much MSG, the same thing happens). But by morning, I was fine. Everything was out of my system.

I did the laundry the next day, and drove up to to the shops with my son. While we were walking around Kmart, I suddenly started to lose my balance. I thought, “What the hell’s going on here!”. I thought it would pass, but it only got worse. I started feeling nauseous. The world around me was starting to spin, and I felt like I was going to fall over. I started having feelings of panic as I naturally imagined the worst. I thought I might have had a stroke or something. Anyway, I told my son that we have to get going.

We managed to get to the car, and I felt like I was getting worse. My son was starting to panic as well, but I thought, “What can I do?”. Do I have to call an ambulance? Should I try to drive home? What would my son do if I had to go to the hospital? My wife was at home, but as we only have one car, there’s not much she could have done. Anyway, against my better judgement, I drove home. I made sure to go the back way along all the side streets, so that I could pull over anytime I needed to.

As I was approaching the house, I suddenly felt so hot. I mean, I was sweating. I took off my jacket and still felt hot, even though it was a cold day. As I pulled up outside the house, I just left the car door open and called out to my wife and ran inside. I slumped myself down on the sofa. She was all confused, but so was I. I felt delirious. I was incredibly nauseous. I felt like I lost all sense of balance. And I felt like that it was all over for me. I contemplated calling the ambulance again, but then I started to calm myself down. What was wrong? What could have caused this? I ruled out the liangpi as it was definitely out of my system, but then I started thinking, I hadn’t eaten anything all day (as I normally don’t eat breakfast – I normally fast throughout the day), but then I started to think that due to the upset stomach the previous night, and the lack of food in the morning, I may well have had extremely low blood sugar, which might explain the dizziness. So my wife got me a couple of lollies, and I sipped on some mint tea, but both just made me want to throw up. I didn’t though, and I let the lollies digest.

I literally couldn’t get up from this half-lying down position on the sofa. Any movement made me feel worse. An hour or so went by, and I was still feeling really bad. I started to think, “What else could it be?”, and then I realised what I had done early in the morning. I was out in the garden, as I often am, just looking at the vegetables. Normally, my climbing beans would look like this, nice and green and lush. But it’s been raining so much of late that they’ve kind of shrivelled up and died. I could see that there were still a couple of young beans on there that still seemed to be okay, so I ate one. I normally don’t eat raw beans, mind you, but if you know me, I don’t like food going to waste, so I ate another. The next one tasted really off. I had to spit it out. But unfortunately, I had already swallowed the first one.

Anyway, while I was in my delirious state on the sofa, I remembered about the green beans, so looked them up on the phone. The first think that popped up was, “While some recipes call for raw green beans, eating them uncooked may lead to nausea, diarrhoea, bloating, and vomiting due to their lectin content. As such, it’s best to avoid raw green beans”. Crap! Not to mention that I had nothing else in my system, so the lectin content had free rein of my stomach. Also, the beans were half rotten, which surely couldn’t have helped.

From this experience, I’d just like to make a Public Health Announcement. Please do not eat raw, rotten, green beans, as they may cause nausea, dizziness, and delirium. I suspect that most of you watching this don’t need this warning, but as a vegan, I often don’t have much variety in my life, so sometimes, a rotting old, raw, green bean seems like a good option.

MUSIC
Melancholia by Godmode

#health #sickness #lifelessons