I still find it hard to believe one can work through vomiting. I had "just a bad taco" (actually bad chicken parm) for dinner earlier in the week, woke up realizing something wasn't right, went to work, but went home sick after seeing my first patient. I had barely ushered him out the door of my office when I realized I wasn't even going to make to the bathroom, turned around, closed the door, and immediately emptied my stomach into the trash can. For the rest of the day I was in agony. All I could do was sit on my couch motionless, under a blanket with the heat cranked up to 75, moaning, occasionally testing my stomach with an ice chip but finding even that to be too much. By evening I managed to sip a little Gatorade and a bit of chicken and rice soup, but no way I could have spent the day standing up or moving around at all, let alone seeing patients.
Hmm, so it sounds like ralphing at work isn't a total BS story....
I don't pretend like I haven't had gastro or food poisoning or whatever to the point I would call in sick to any job.
Lol, the only time I was as sick as you state was food poisoning from homemade deer jerky.... and the time I drank 6 bottles of red wine to myself one evening. No, really,
6 bottles of wine to myself. I can think of a couple other offhand times a virus or food made me about that sick.
I wasn't going to go there, but since I'm being accused of being a liar... when my parent died suddenly and unexpectedly, I went back after calling out only 2 days. Grieving was the first time I discovered just how much emotional upset can affect the GI tract. I wasn't even having a fit of upset or anything. I just ate lunch and the next day that exact same lunch came up, like it hadn't moved, just sort of rotted in my stomach. That sort of gastroparesis stayed with me for a while, and ironically that's when I lost the 5-10 vanity pounds that diet and exercise couldn't move earlier in med school.
My first day back we had to have an end of life conversation with this totally cachetic cancer patient, and I just lost it. That was a trash can heaves moment for me. Luckily I didn't have an appetite and already got sick that morning, so nothing to lose. The rest of that rotation leading up to the memorial I carried an emesis bag. I'm not ashamed to say that more than once I had to go to the bathroom or have heaves. I know for a fact my colleagues were aware. But what do you do?
I knew more than one colleague who was sexually assaulted and somehow dealing with PTSD type sx and they would have to make a run to the restroom. I assumed to gather themselves, but after what I learned about GI upset, possibly more, and I wouldn't know.
There's some sort of Scrubs scene with Elliot in the closet crying early intern year. It's not that far off reality.
Anyway, the point is that there are multiple reasons to have various symptoms,
I have a good friend who gets GI migraines and would vomit up to 10 times a day at work in the hospital. Yes, really.
Anyway, after my parent died, I just sorta got used to the idea of showing up to work even if I thought puke might happen. Not all vomiting is so uncontrollable you can't do your gorram job. Even the times it was a virus, if I thought I could keep from puking or shytting on someone, I would go to work.
I've done a prep for a colonoscopy, so there's definitely a scale for how controllable diarrhea is as well.
