So I'm alive. Not that anyone was concerned that I was dead, I mean people usually don't assume the worst when someone hasn't posted on here for awhile. Well, I'm not dead- but I could have been. Some of you who don't know are probably asking yourself-what? Could have been dead? Hold your horses and let me explain.

My first week of work went fine. They didn't let us do anything really because they wanted us to get used to the lab environment before they start letting us work with samples all the time. I came home for Mother's day and on Saturday I started to feel sick. I thought it might have been from the Denny's I had that morning, but really there wouldn't have been enough time for any of the food to make me that sick. The next day I started to feel a little better, but not for long. By 9 pm that evening, I felt more horrible than I had before. I took some advil and when to sleep. I woke up about 3 hours later with violent cramping and diarrhea. I wasn't going to go to work, but my roommate (and co-worker)was going and she said she felt sick too. So I drove us to work for our 5 am start time. We both lasted an hour before we had to go home. I drove us to IGA, we bought sick food (gatorade and chicken soup) and I went home and lay down on my bed only getting up to go to the bathroom. The cramping was becoming unbearable. Then, around 10 am I noticed I was bleeding from somewhere one should never bleed. That is when I told my roommate, that I wanted her to drive me to the hospital, because at this point the cramping was so bad I could barely speak.

We got to emergency, and I could barely tell the nurse what was wrong. She told me, "I don't read hands." and finally she directed me to admitting. I got my papers and was sent back to the mean emergency nurse and was able to tell her what was wrong. I was fairly certain at this point that I knew what I had. But they have to test all posibilities. I waited a relatively short time (3 hours- which if you have ever been to emerg, is pretty short) before I saw a doctor. They promply hooked me up to an IV, asked me to give a stool sample and whisked me off to the private room where I would spend the next five days in isolation. Isolation meaning that I wasn't allowed to leave my room.I couldn't even phone my parents long distance to tell them I was in hospital. But my boss fixed that and gave me the company phone for the week. This wasn't so bad at the begining, where I didn't feel like leaving my bed at all. But when I started to feel a little better I felt trapped.

So what did they find I had? E. coli 0157. One of the bacteria that we test for in the lab I work in. I was pretty sure based on my symptoms that this is what I had. What is more is that a day later, my roommate was hospitalized for the same thing. We think that we got it at work- even though we never touched incubated samples. We think that we might have picked it up sorting the samples that we sign in when they come from the plant. It only takes 1-5 cells to cause the infection. If you want to learn more about E. coli 0157 go here. It has a lot of good info.

Now I am in Calgary, recovering. I don't know when I will go back to work. When I can eat a decent amount of solid food and don't feel so weak I guess. I'm very bloated right now. I think it might be from being on IV for 5 days staight. I gained 15 pounds in water. Well it has to be water, because I was on the liquid diet and I could barely keep that down half the time.

I'm sad I got sick, mostly because I was supposed to go up to see Ryan in Innisfail this weekend for his birthday. I miss him a lot, but really I wouldn't be much fun this weekend. If I am feeling better, I might go up next weekend.

Anyhow, we have internet at my place now, so pretty soon I will be able to post a little more regularly.

I get tired really easily, so I think I am going to get off the computer. So hopefully, the next time I post I am in much better health. Perhaps I will post when I can eat pizza again.

State: I don't feel like death anymore