It's been a bit of a rough few weeks for this gal. This body has yet again, very literally humbled me to my knees and left me in awe all the same time. Now I'm just working on getting this mind over the hump. But, this was a good weekend and I can feel the unease fading and some centeredness slipping back in.
Around the last weekend in June, I woke up on a Sunday morning and decided to do my typical egg scramble. It was a rest day and so there wasn't to much activity planned - just a nice long walk and about a quarter mile swim in the pool.
I ate my breakfast and continued on with the day finishing up chores to prep for the week to come so I could finish up the 18 laps and enjoy some floaty time.
And, I did! I have to state this summer (for the most part) has been heavenly since incorporating recovery scores into my workout regimen. I finally have time to relax and just "float" in the pool. To be honest, it's probably the first time in 3 years I've allowed myself to do that after swimming laps.
Anyhow, it was after I got of the floaty and started to head inside for my Sunday night shower that I noticed my stomach felt kinda queasy. I wondered if it might be the heat since we've had so many 90 plus degree days this summer. But, I really have been working hard to stay hydrated.
The queasiness transitioned into full blown nausea in the shower. And, I found myself contemplating whether or not I should stay in the shower and be sick or cut the shower short and just aim for the toilet.
...the toilet won out.
And, without getting to descriptive the entire contents of my breakfast was donated to the porcelain God.
To be honest, I was surprised breakfast hadn't fully digested by that point. What stood out even more is that part of the contents include completely undigested cremini mushrooms.
I don't know why, but something in my gut (very literally) felt the issue lay with those those mushrooms.
To be fair, I'm not very thorough about cleaning the mushrooms I add to my egg scramble. I love creminis and have been adding them to my eggs for over 3 years now. They're a great bulk food and I slice and sauteé the mushrooms with bacon bits before I pour the scramble over them to cook.
Nonetheless, I also know that 90% of what most folks think are a "stomach bug" are usually attributed to some type of bacteria our gut biome just doesn't like. Your neighbor or family member might be totally fine with it, but our gut bacteria really is unique to us. And, so what one gut tolerates can be different than someone else's. So, I didn't think to much of it and figured there might have been something in that batch of mushrooms my gut just didn't like. I took the following day off and recovered quickly.
Fast forward the weekend after last. It was a Saturday and I had a fairly big training load that day. 23 minute warm up on the bike and a weight session that included those masochistic Bulgarian lunges, with a .75 mile swim afterward. I made another scramble. I made it huge this time because I was trying to fuel up. There were 3 cremini mushrooms left. I made sure to scrub them well, chopped them up and threw them in with my eggs.
I ate everything, had my 2 cups of coffee and did my weight's session which kicked my butt (literally). I was feeling okay until I went out to take the cover off the pool.
And, that's when the dizziness and unease hit me. It didn't take long before unease turned to queasiness, and queasiness to nausea.
Mom came out to sit with me and I told her the heat was getting to me and that I was going inside to lay down for a little bit.
I didn't even get the chance. I was inside for 10 minutes before the vomiting began. Only this time, a good portion of the breakfast had already been digested except...
those damn cremini mushrooms.
And, this time around my gut meant business. I have never in my life been so violently ill. I cannot tell you how many times I vomited over the course of 3 hours. At one point, I started crying like a 2 year old and my 71 year old mother had both hands under my armpits trying to hold me over the toilet and massage my ribs at the same time as my abs had started to spasm.
I don't even remember which trip to the bathroom it was, but my legs started to spasm and stiffin as well due to dehydration and Mama said, "I don't know sweetheart, we may need to go to the hospital."
I said, "if we do - call an ambulance because I am not sitting in a waiting room answering stupid questions while I puke into a tub just to get an IV drip."
p.s. The beauty of having a pharmaceutical pay for your MS treatment is that your annual "out of pocket" deductible gets hit very early. As a result, an ambulance would likely have been all I had to pay for if I had been admitted to the hospital.
Needless to say, an ambulance would probably have been needed as it was very difficult to walk. I don't think I have ever felt my lower limbs go so spastic and stiff since the first flare up in 2017.
I was very shaky, too because my blood sugar had dropped. And, because I wasn't holding water or Pedialyte down, it was useless to take my muscle relaxers.
It was the heating pad that became the turning point. My whole body felt like it was one big spasm. Everything ached so bad. I hadn't even had time for a cool down stretch after the weight session.
Lemme tell ya folks, when Bulgarian split lunges are a part of one's weight's session - ham string and calf stretches are absolutely imperative regardless of whether you have MS.
When Mama placed that heating pad underneath my ribs - I cannot begin to tell you the bliss that came over me. I could breathe...I could relax...I could finally exhale.
I didn't move a single muscle. Mama said, "If we can get that vomiting to stop for just one hour...I'll bring down the muscle relaxers and pepto".
Well, one hour passed and I hadn't made a trip to the bathroom. She came down with the muscle relaxers and I allowed myself a small sip of cold water and a small sip of pedialyte." She walked out of the room for one moment to feed my cat and before I knew it...I was back to the toilet again. I almost didn't make it in time and without being to graphic - it was nothing but bile at this point with the last little itty bitty bits of mushroom.
By this point, rest assured we knew it was the mushrooms. My gut was making it as clear as possible what in fact it absolutely unequivocally would not allow. What amazed us both is that it really didn't want a single bit of it in or around any part of my digestive tract.
Needless to say, we both got the point loud and clear and the next morning Mama said, "even if you asked me too, I will never ever get mushrooms for you again."
I don't want to villainize mushrooms. Both my mom and I strongly suspect there might very well have been a strain of ecoli in that batch. Especially, since I reacted so violently.
Finally, after 6:30 p.m. things abated and I was left feeling like someone beat the hell out of me with a baseball bat. My throat was fried and felt like hamburger meat. I spent last week introducing food slowly back into my system and my stomach thankfully let me know, it was okay and willing to take things like toasted bread with peanut butter and honey, dates, rice cakes, and protein bars. I had to let my throat heal as well.
I just let myself gravitate towards things that sounded good or craved. My taste was still off and my tummy acids still working to find their equilibrium again. But, I can thankfully say I feel pretty darn good at this point.
I kept up with all my training last week as well. I even did a 40 minute bike ride and .75 mile swim the day after all this happened. But, believe you me - I was not intense about anything. It was more going though the motions to gently wake my central nervous system and remind it that it was time to slip out of "sick mode"
There are no new PR's to report just a whole bunch of thankfulness that those moments have passed and that this body was strong and healthy enough to get through it.
I am also thankful to this body for being adamant about knowing what it wants and knowing exactly what it doesn't want. Whether or not it was a strain of ecoli or something else - this gut definitely asserted it's boundaries. And, though it wasn't a pleasant experience - I am still in awe at how quickly I recovered.
Also, I can state with great relief - it never hit my intestines. That woulda been a real mess.
So, yeah no mushrooms for a long, long, long while. And, though I will eat eggs again - we'll just say I need to put a little distance between me and my scrambled friends for a bit. We need some time away....
Anyhow, that's the gist but I'm not going to lie it was a bit traumatizing for both my mom and I. At one point, Mama said "I just hoped it wasn't something you could die from." I replied, "to be honest, I felt so miserable I wanted to die!"
Of course, I'm genuinely glad I didn't. There's to many things left to do
...like the 2 week trip to the Galapagos' Islands in October :-)
Let the conditioning begin! Time to increase the cardio - we gotta make sure apart from mushrooms - these legs can handle sea, sand, and hilly island paradises!
