catching up on my electrolytes

we get really ill every now and again to help ourselves remember just how good we normally feel despite moaning and whining to the contrary. at least, getting as ill as i have been the past 24 odd hours has to have some justification to those means. if not, then i demand compensation.

the poetics of puke.
what do you call it?

(i suppose a Warning would be fair play here; those light of stomach would find it in their best interest to pass over this particular post.)

there are so many names for throw-up. throw-up for example. in england, to be sick means to have made sick, that goup which i refer to as vomit is simply called sick. the tangible evidence of the matter of fact. one i never used but always found amusing is "up-chuck". in college the term "spew" took on a whole new level of meaning. there's the coined classic "barf". the term most commonly used in my family was and always will be 'puke'. how wretched does it sound?

last night i puked a lot.

there's a charming sentence, no? charming or not, it's true. more true than any other truth. and i mean a lot.

every hour, between 24 past and 56 past i would wake in a cold fevery sweat and muster up every once of potential energy in my rotting excuse of a body to haul to the toilet just in time to puke all over myself, the toilet bowl and the bathroom floor. i missed a few times; like the first time i got it all over the bed and scared the cat into hiding. it wasn't until about the 6th time i rushed into the bathroom and revoltingly discharged into the toilet bowl that i realized and immediately asked my husband (who i'd woken up every single time i got sick so that he could be the dear that he is and come protect me from panic-attacks and fetch me fresh clothes and water and such; thank you ryan, so much) "why am i puking up green!?" -- in a very feeble, tired, bemused sort of tone.

you see it in cartoons all the time. the little girl in the Exorsist spews green gutts all over. but how often do people actually throw-up green? ryan quelled my fears by reminding me that the only thing i'd had to eat that day was nightquil gell tablets which happened to be toxic-bright green and the only substance remaining in my disfunctional body. green puke is simply not natural though. it was a first for me. i'm more used to the yellow-brown sort.

not only did the nightquil turn my puke an amusing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles green, it also stung like a mo-fo. went out my nose and everything. i can tell you for fact that nightquil + nose = not nice (with not-nice bonus multiplier as it happened several times last night).

at least i was a normal shade of yellow and death this morning... after speaking with my regular doctor over the phone and her response being "go to the hospital or dial 911" my father-in-law took me to the walk in clinic (which you're supposed to make appoints for now (??), but i was close enough to death that the NP Joan overruled the receptionist and took me in to see the doctor). they juiced me up with a sodium/glucose i.v. solution and gave me some nausea medication (good enough for cancer patients is good enough for me).

am on my second bottle of gatorade (aka electrolyte's) and am feeling a million times better than i was last night. ryan and i are both a bit wrecked from the whole mess of me last night though. as long as my eyes don't pop out my skull like they threatened to do last night at one point, i'll be happy.

the experience wasn't really worth it all, but i guess the green-puke thing is pretty funny in retrospect. comical i should say, not funny. comical.

so what's your favorite colour of puke? or whatever you call it.