Food Poisoning and Worse Before a Flight

So, you guys know I have bad luck. It’s not even a surprise anymore.

The day before our family trip international flight, I believed the day was going to be normal. I was feeling hungry for breakfast and remembered I had 2 packs of instant ramen in my car. It’s been sitting there for about a month due to plain forgetfulness, but I was in the mood for some Maruchan. I down the two packs before beginning to get ready for work. As I’m applying my makeup about an hour later, I slowly begin to process a sinking feeling in my stomach. Sure it’s a bit odd, but maybe all I needed was a good shit. I do my business, finish my makeup, and go to work as usual.

I’m only a work for 45 minutes before I tell my manager I need to clock out because I couldn’t handle it. I had chills and even more of a sinking feeling. Even though it was only a small feeling, I could tell a storm was brewing. I got home and took some Pepto Bismol as a precaution. I fell asleep before waking up to the worse stomach pain in my life. Getting out of my bed was out of question and I was just stuck in the fetal position until 11pm. That’s when all hell broke loose. Nonstop diarrhea and vomiting. I would sit down to shit liquid diarrhea, wipe, and when I stood up to pull my underwear, I’d had to sit back down immediately again. Vomiting and diarrhea both were just complete liquids and odd colors. Apparently, I read that leaving instant ramen in your car could leave the food directly in the sun and something about the oils cooking and whatever and that leads to food poisoning. It lasted for 2 hours straight before I just plopped on my bed from exhaustion and dehydration.

That 8am morning, I woke straight up for another bathroom trip. I was feeling slightly better, but I still didn’t want to eat anything. Yesterday should’ve been filled with me packing for the trip, but I was too out of commission. I had to scramble as much as I could today for our 11:30pm flight. All was going well. My stomach was slowly getting better and even if I couldn’t eat, at least I stopped vomiting.

Going to the airport was easy enough in my mom’s car. There, we met with my sister and her boyfriend to help us push around all the luggage. We were checked in, ready to go, and were about to go through the security checkpoint. By then, my sister and boyfriend had left us to go by ourselves since only passengers were allowed past that area. Her boyfriend takes their car back to their house, while my sister takes my mom’s car back to our house. I get separated from my family and into another line for security but all seems well. I get through fine, but I turn my head around and see that my family is caught up at the line. My dad gets through and I go over to him calmly just thinking that the security is normally slow. NOPE. He informs that my aunt, -you know the deaf one that normally has seizures and had them for a week straight some few months ago- , had a seizure and bonked her head on the ground. No one saw what happened but my mom was only alerted once she heard the commotion of the people around her. She was conscious again after a minute but the TSA people were still freaked. Paramedics were surrounding her and my mom has VERY limited English. I rush over to try and translate and the gist of it was that there’s no way the airline is going to let my aunt on the plane.

The paramedics want to take her to the hospital on an ambulance, but we’re still trying to payback the $6500 ambulance ride from my uncle and cousin from a few months back so we strongly decline. We sign the refusal forms and plan to order an Uber since we don’t have our cars. In that commotion, the airline also tells us that we WON’T be getting a refund since this is our fault and any rescheduling will have a $300 rescheduling fee PER TICKET. Hearing this, we just send my dad off to vacation first since we don’t want to pay for ALL the fees. The paramedics leave after we sign the papers and now it’s left to me, my mom, my aunt, and the airline since we need to wait for our luggage to come back. The thing with my aunt’s seizures is very common so none of us are as worried as the paramedics make it out to seem, but there is a very huge welt on her head. While waiting for our luggage, we make the plan to call my sister over with her boyfriend’s SUV. She could take all the luggage back to our house while we Uber to a hospital since we can’t be in the ER with 400+ pounds of luggage everywhere.

The stewardesses come with our luggage by 11:15pm and my sister gets back to the airport around the same time. My sister informs us she didn’t take our car home yet and parked it at a parking garage nearby for the day since our house is a long ride from the airport and she was just going to take it back another day. My sister sets off first with the luggage back to our house, while my mom, aunt, and I get an Uber to the parking garage to retrieve our car. It was a long night and we just wanted to head home first to debrief before going to the hospital.

We came home before my sister did and took a break. There were ready-made sandwiches in the fridge and everyone was able to get 2 or 3 bites in before my sister came through the door and we had to help bring in the luggage. Yea I still had food poisoning but I wasn’t spewing out shit anymore. It still hurt my stomach anytime anything other than liquid entered, but I needed my energy levels up. Since we were already up and working, my mom decided to just go to the hospital before we start getting tired and lazy again.

It was 2 in the morning when we left and 5 in the morning when we got back. After all the tests and scans, everything came back normal. I was falling asleep in the ER sitting by her hospital bed. I would doze off for 5 minutes before the heart monitor would make noises and start up. All we need now is an appointment with her primary care doctor so they can sign off if she’s “fit to fly” and then we can reschedule the tickets. By the time we got home, everyone was tired and moody. Last night’s sleep was the best of my life.

TLDR: one of you bitches prayed on my downfall and it worked.