My Thanksgiving Vacation

I spent Thanksgiving with my friends Em (my co-worker) and Jack (her husband) who were visiting both their families over the break.

Tues. night I felt awful by the time we made it to Em's parent's house and I basically came in and went upstairs to my assigned room. Then I ran to the bathroom and threw up
Cleaned up and went back to my room. Then I threw up again, but this time, the toilet got clogged and I couldn't find a plunger. Em's sister Eliza was upstairs and I confessed to her she ran down and announced it to everyone and then Em came upstairs fixed the clog and got me a bucket just in case. Thank god she did b/c the third time someone was in the bathroom. Luckily that was the last time. I cleaned up everything for a third time and went to bed, my stomach still hurting all the way into my back. At 2:30 am, I woke up and felt fine. I felt fine all day I started out with dry toast and still felt great so we assumed it was some kind of food poisoning and went about the day normally (which was good b/c we were headed to philly that day). We got to philly I still felt great, we put our stuff in the respective rooms and hung out and then Jack's aunt made a Filipino dinner and we ate some of the best fried rice I have ever had (she uses a mushroom soy sauce, I had never even heard of that before). We went to bed a little after 11 and then I woke up around 12:30 again feeling awful. Like someone was sticking a burning poker through me all the way to my back. I threw up again and the pain wouldn't go away. I talked to my dad who had his gall bladder removed and he said he thought that it sounded like his pain. Em came up and checked on me (not sure if I was making a lot of noise or what). At about 3:00 I asked if we could go to the hospital and so we did. They took blood and gave me an iv with fluids and then made me submit to various indignities (like giving a urine sample while I was holding my iv – let me tell you, that's really, really not easy). I mentioned my family history with gall bladders being removed and they seemed to ignore that. At 6:00 just like the night before the pain was gone etc. when informed of this they canceled the tests and released me and gave me a prescription for prilosec. The most annoying thing I thought was that she said if you think the Maalox helped you can get it in the pharmacy and I said I don't think the Maalox helped, I was in pain six hours last night and six hours tonight. I just think the pain stopped on it own and she said maybe it was the atmosphere here. I wanted to slap her.

Jack thought the most annoying part was when she gave me the prescription for prilosec and said it was a prescription for prilosec otc, but I could get it in the store without a prescription. Because O-T-C stood for Over The Counter. Jack repeated that over and over, he loved that line and the tone of stupidity it was said with.

I only ate saltines and drank 7 up the next day till we went out for thanksgiving dinner then I had some chicken and a little bit of mashed potatoes. I was fine thurs. night.

Friday, apparently I felt a dearth of attention. I fell down the stairs. There was a landing about half way down and I did just that there. In the process, my slipper flew off my foot and shot into the living room where Em and Jack were. They couldn't actually see me, they just heard the banging down the stairs and saw the slipper fly into the living room. Jack grabbed the slipper and rushed over to the stairs. He asked me if I was okay. I said yes, and then I started laughing at how ridiculous it all was.

This didn't comfort him. He asked me again if I was okay and I said yes, I am laughing and he said yeah, I know, why are you laughing? But it was really so ridiculous!

Anyway, after that I shaped up and let people sleep through the night though I am not sure that they'll invite me to join them any time soon. . . .

We did go to the Archeology museum at UPenn which was really cool and to the Mutter museum, again very neat (though incredibly crowded and sickeningly hot so we left before I could thoroughly examine everything). We also had lunch at the White Dog Cafe -- great food, though the service was terrible (the server managed to spill water on one of our friend's menus, himself and the floor on three separate ocassions -- also, I asked for water and he wated on three tables including bringing them water before he came back to our table to fill my water), it was still worth enduring for the food. I think those are the highlights. I really, really had a good time.