Pain in My Tummy

That's me in the emergency room.

These little succulent morsels are probably what got me there. But we will never know for sure.

This is what I taught my hubby to make for me today. Okayu (rice porridge usually served when you're sick) with umeboshi (pickled plum).

Let's see... Without going into the embarassing details... On Monday starting after lunch and up through bedtime, my stomach wasn't feeling that great. Earlier that evening, we decided to go to Luka's Taproom and Lounge. We've been there a few times for only cockails. Our friends told us that you can get one dollar oysters every Monday there. So we decided to go and try their entrees as well. The entrees weren't good. But the oysters were so good. We ordered a half dozen more, in fact. Our only complaint was that they were not all consistent sizes. There were puny ones that should have only been charged fifty cents!

Then, the next day on Tuesday, my husband and I headed out to the city to check out the cute stores on Hayes St. in Hayes Valley and then go to the Giant Robot store in Haight-Ashbury. When we were shopping on Hayes St., I spotted Patxi's Chicago Pizza. I was so excited because my friend told me about how it's supposed to be the rival of East Bay's Zachary's Chicago Pizza. So, I wanted to try it. We went there around 3pm and ordered a slice each of the spinach and mushroom deep-dish pizza. It was a lot less gloppier than Zachary's. And I was able to taste the flavor of the spinach. Overall, it was good, but I think I still crave for Zachary's. I don't know what it is. I think I'll have to go to Zachary's and try again. Hee hee!

Oops. Better stop with the food commentary. So anyhow, maybe around 5pm when we were in Haight-Ashbury, I had to go to the bathroom. Didn't feel too urgent, but I had this pain in my stomach like the squeezing pain you get when you have the stomach flu. So, right then, I thought that something's not right with me. As we finally headed home, we made a stop at the San Francisco Shopping Center to use the restroom before hopping onto BART to head back to Oakland. The squeezing pain kept occuring once in awhile, but it was nothing compared to the urgency of needing a restroom once I was waiting for BART. I was so miserable on BART and then the walk back to the apartment was excruciating! Once I got to the apartment, I ran for the bathroom. After that was all over, that squeezing pain just became worse. It was sharp and would stab me several times and then stop for awhile and start again. It was worse than the pain from the flu. It was so bad that I felt the saliva coming to the sides of my mouth so that I felt like vomiting. So then, Hubby took me to the emergency room.

I was tested and asked questions by the nurses and the doctor. Basically he found nothing wrong with me. He said that it's one of those things where we will never know what it is that caused this. He said that it may be food poisoning even though Hubby ate everything I did. He said that it's normal to have a thousand people eating the same contaminated food and half the people would be fine and the other half get sick. So, I got 2 cold bags of fluids put in me since I was so dehydrated. He said that that would relieve the pain in my stomach since it was so empty. I feel a lot better today. I still get the squeezing pain once in awhile, but it's a lot tolerable. The funny thing is, my mother-in-law called yesterday before we headed out to the city to ask if we were feeling fine; she knew we had eaten oysters. She had heard that oysters were recalled in Washington so she was concerned for us. At the time she called, I was fine. Oh! Another funny thing is that while we were at ER, there was a 3.2 earthquake! The epicenter was right there in Oakland.

I emailed the friends who recommended Luka's Monday $1 Oysters and Patxi's pizza the photos of me in ER. Hee hee. Giving them a hard time for their recommendations. *wink wink* So, I think out of all the things we've had, it had to be the oysters. I don't think I'll have $1 oysters anymore. I'll only eat it if maybe I fish it out of clear waters myself during peak safe and yummy season. And no dolphin better have pee-ed on it!

My hubby just told me a funny thing. He said that he was worried for me because if anything were to happen to me last night, I wouldn't have finished "Harry Potter". Hahahahaha! Yes, he is so right!