Food for Thought

When the clock struck 12 last Sunday, my husband felt discomfort in his stomach, making the first of his series of trips to the bathroom. To make things worse, he also had vomiting spells. By 5am, he was too weak to simply ignore what he was feeling, and we both decided that we should go to the hospital. But we were without company at that time because my niece went home and would only be back later that day. My son was also fast asleep, and we wouldn’t want to bring him along to witness his Daddy’s distress. Besides, it’s not even safe to take kids to the hospital these days because of the A(H1N1) threat.

So I called my father, asked him to go to our place first thing in the morning, and my husband went to the hospital by his lonesome since there’d be no one to look after our son. To make the long story short, my husband was hospitalized for acute gastroenteritis. Because he became too dehydrated, he was also diagnosed with acute renal failure. (Lesson: Too much fluid loss in the body can affect one’s kidney.) We had oral rehydration salts in the house to be mixed with a glass of water, but he hates the taste of it, so I couldn’t make him drink it. His doctor told us we should have bought Gatorade instead. How come we haven’t thought of that? We were out of the hospital by Tuesday afternoon.

Do you want to know what my husband ate before he started having diarrhea and vomiting? He had tahong (mussels). Now, I don’t think we’ll be serving that dish in our house for a very long time.