The Korean Crud

After expressing how much I love Korean food in my last post, I got the Korean Crud aka Viral Gastroenteritis a week later.
Now.

I'm not saying that beef dishes cause the Korean Crud, but this is exactly what I ate on Thursday evening before I starting vomiting the next day...nonstop. I won't mention which part of my body the vomit was exiting either.

The 'Korean Crud' is the nickname my friend made me hip to describe this virus. He said that mostly every foreigner new to South Korea comes down with it.

So, yeah.

My girl's boss was right after all about not eating everywhere. I feel sort of bad calling him a character too. Because apparently, he's a character who knows what the hell he's talking about!

To sum up the virus, I have....it's like the flu. The symptoms are a fever, chills, body ache, headache, vomiting.....and to make matters worse, since feeling these symptoms alone aren't enough. Add diarrhea to the mix!

I seriously thought I was dying yesterday!

I could barely get up to use the bathroom and vomit. When the bathroom is only three footsteps away from my bed, yet every time I picked myself to use the bathroom. I felt like I was climbing Mt. Everest just to get there.

Every time I drank a little bit of water, I was on the toilet five minutes later. TMI! I know. Then I stopped drinking fluids, so I didn't have to move, and I could sleep and shake off the fever chills.

The good news: I broke my fever!

I still have stomach cramps and diarrhea. But man, I can move around more and my body doesn't ache! Which is a major improvement from yesterday.

Oh, and I can't believe I slept for 20 hours!!!!

I hadn't eaten any real food in three days. Just nibbled on crackers and drank Gatorade with my nasty tasting meds that made me go to the bathroom anyways.

So  I sent my work husband/grown son out to get me toilet tissue and a large pepperoni pizza to eat.....by myself.

But he wanted some too, so we ended up sharing it.

It was SO good!

I was in the bathroom rejecting the remains of it an hour after eating it.

But let me tell you something, every slice I ate was worth the discomfort later.

Sigh.

Moral of the story: be very careful what you eat and drink in different countries. Don't eat from stands, you have no idea how long the food has been sitting for or how it was prepared. Never ever drink tap water. If you clean a cup with tap water, dry it with a towel asap before pouring a beverage into it.