If you have ever had your stomach pumped, you know it is not something you volunteer for. Usually, this violent procedure follows what Webster’s would simply call “bad.” Bad can take several forms, but if a stomach pump is the cure, this type of bad is near the top of the bad category. My particular strain of bad was called ptomaine poison, or so I was told in Arkansas where I contracted the illness on a college trip when I was seventeen years old. The food poison rode inside a hamburger like a Trojan horse. The affects of the treatment left a mark that aggravates me to this day and may eventually be the root of my demise. Of course, we all have a root for our demise, so perhaps knowing just blunts the trauma of the eventual truth a bit.
Without going into the details of the effects of my food borne illness (it is unpleasant to even describe, much less endure), I will allow that the old school ptomaine poisoning theory is no longer used by science, which doesn’t dampen the ugliness. Likely I suffered some type of e-coli episode mistreated as ptomaine poisoning by medical personnel who were doing the best they could at the time and in the place where they practiced. A chicken foot and a bone may have saved me as well, but since I walked away, I won’t denigrate the treatment too much. During my week in the hospital, however, I nearly died twice. The nurse brought in a minister once. I know he wasn’t a priest because they don’t wear softball uniforms with the name of a local garage silk screened on the chest. Must have been league night when he got the call.
Prayers were said. Morphine and antibiotics were administered. Nine times they pumped my stomach. The aftermath left fissures like plowed trails inside me. The valve at the top of my stomach was nearly ripped from its hinges by the tube going in over and over. The inside of my stomach looks like a drunken farmer tried to plant crops in a bog.
It gave me a new respect for organisms, made me glad I don’t work in the ER and ended any thought of future travel plans to the Razorback state. Sorry to my Arkansas friends. When a bug so invisibly vile can sneak down your throat and throw a gut bomb kegger, invite the Grim Reaper as special guest, and treat you like an extra in one of the Saw sequels, you think about everything you eat from then on. I have sat in restaurants since then, looking deeply at my food, examining the little curls and crinkles, trying to see anything that might get all WWF inside me.
Remember Sea Monkeys? They came in a box, looked like innocent seeds, but pour them into an aquarium and they grew up and went nuts, swirling around like Emmitt Smith on Dancing With The Stars. That’s what happened to me. Once the ugly little beasts got inside me, they turned into a swollen Fred Astairoid.
I’ve always heard, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” Sometimes what doesn’t kill us tries to, very hard. Ask Evil Knievel. Wait, he’s dead. Never mind.
I am not stronger for having survived this unfortunate illness and the subsequent procedure to cure it – nor am I wiser. But we need a few scars to prove we were here. It makes us human and textured. Those who get out of the show clean and smooth are destined for vanilla hell. My hell had pickles, onions, ketchup and mustard.
