Making a note for the future
At midnight the nausea and retching began. This is par for the course, alongside my sanity starting to slip in spite of myself.
I recall my friend asked me, a year ago. Maybe more. How well I was doing. He knew back then that without his presence I was starting to slip. Literally Dory to his Marlin. But there was nothing he could do about it.
I’m in a lot of emotional pain and I’m so scared. On the other hand, shortly the nausea will edge it out.
I wish I was doing better. SF, fantasy, tea, and sherlock holmes much. Better t o blog about.
Spontaneous ∂erivation 
If you want to imagine that I’m guarding your door, and that I have a sword of mincing and a mace of mashing (and some napalm, too, if necessary)… well, just go right ahead. Though, since all of my characters over the years have been clerics, perhaps I just have numerous spells of protection and healing. Whatever works for you.
IRL, I’m sending you thoughts of peace and comfort.
*hugs* Hang in there. Get some EpicHugs from your EpicPlush.
But it does sound like you’ve maxed out the Pepto – it’s time for something bigger and badder to defeat those nauseamonsters.
Thank you. It’s been a long night/early morning. On that note, that is an interesting thought… will write about that in the net save point really soon now.
Cori R.,
I didn’t see your comment, I’m a little slow at the typing and working out how email works. Good suggestions. Pepto Bismol is cracking stuff though—it’s managed to stop really bad nausea in lab tests. Just not my nausea. Funny, that.
Well, Pepto makes me throw up not stop, so I tend not to think of it as being very effective. I took some stuff in Europe (I got very very sick with the flu and was hospitalized because of throwing up so much) that worked wonders on me, which is why I suggested something different. My Dr-mom-in-law also made me drink this weird clay stuff that helped soothe my irritated tummy lining while recovering.. it was strange, but also highly effective.
Cori R.,
Aaah. I’ll have to talk to my doctor when I can at some point. If there’s even better stuff out there, I would be less afraid of the days themselves (so many layers of anxiety…).
The clay stuff may have been actual clay: in some parts of the world, you can buy filtered, sterilized clay either dry or mixed with water. The clay absorbs irritating molecules from the food so your digestive system doesn’t have to deal with them. It’s sold over the counter like Kaopectate (which is made partly from kaolin clay).
I mention this because when you do talk to your doctor, if he hasn’t heard of it, that may be because it’s less a drug than a dietary supplement.
Wogglebug: You are absolutely right. Mine is sold under the brand name “Smecta” from France. It’s simply powdered white clay, comes in a packet and you mix it with water then drink it. Doesn’t taste bad (it’s very boring). Not sure how available the powdered clay-only stuff is here, though Kaopectate is everywhere. But the concept is still weird to me even if it works!
How strange. I’ve heard of clay being useful in medicinal context before, but only a little bit.
I wonder if it would work if the cause of nausea is apparently anxiety, but presumably the anxiety is not helping digestion at all.
I don’t know. My not-at-all-expert understanding is that some foods contain molecules that can irritate the stomach (like eggplant, cloves, or tomatoes), and some foods require specialized enzymes to digest (like meat and milk). Different people have different tolerances, but when a person is sick or upset, their digestion may become a lot more fussy and refuse to handle foods that it normally handles fine. Thus the Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast diet that Cori recommended consists of things that are very easy to digest.
If the Smecta does work for anxiety-related indigestion, the mechanism would probably be that it absorbed and cushioned whatever food your digestion refused to touch, so that everything could pass smoothly through your body instead of coming back up. So you might still feel nausea, you’d just be keeping food down better.
*nods* I think Wogglebug is right about how it works. In my experience, Smecta helps against the physical effects caused by nausea, namely the damage done to the system by throwing up. It helps break you out of the cycle where you’re throwing up not because you need to or are too anxious, but because your stomach is irritated from throwing up so much. You’re still nauseated but not to the point of getting rid of everything every time. In this, it’s quite similar to Pepto’s coating effect.
I would be happy to send you a few packets from my stash if you’d like to try it.
I do still heartily recommend something stronger than Pepto to keep you from throwing up in the first place — something stronger that’s specifically for anti-nausea. My father had prescription anti-nausea pills when he caught a bad flu that worked very, very well, for example. I don’t know what it’s called, but I can ask him so you can give your candyman a better idea of what you’re looking for, if you like.
I remember when I had the flu quite badly once, and they also gave me some kind of anti-nausea medicine.
I’ll have to check it out.