Chinese Fire Stomach

Hello Everyone!

I had meant to write in another entry sooner, but my plans were thwarted by a bad case of the Chinese Fire Stomach. I know it's Chinese Fire Stomach as opposed to Malaysian Fire Stomach because I had not yet eaten anything in Malaysia when the troubles began.

I should probably back up. On Wednesday night of last week, we ate at a restaurant famous for "Hot Pot". Basically, this is 2 vats of soup (one spicy, one mild) heated in the center of the table. You then cook various meats, seafood, vegetables and eggs in the soup after it comes to a roaring boil. Let's say you've got a nice slice of schnauzer you want to consume. Just scoop it up w/your chop sticks and put it into the vat for awhile. Then, when it's done you pull it back out and eat it.

Spicy soup and mild soup. It's a relative thing. They are both spicy. But the spicy soup is VERY spicy. It's spicy beyond anything any Caucasian can possibly imagine. Think about rectangular vat of soup, about 6 inches by 18 inches covered in red peppers w/the diameter of your basic okra. These peppers have been cut up into small slices and the process of boiling them extracts the oils into the soup. Once you decide it's spicy enough (we let it boil for about 5 minutes) you then scoop out all the peppers and discard them… At this point you can start cooking.

Did I mention it's really spicy?

I ate exclusively out of the spicy soup with the exception of the shrimp balls, which got cooked in the mild soup.

All of this detail… really only one outcome: Chinese Fire Stomach.

The next day I had the worst indigestion I've every had in my life. Was it worth it? You're damned straight it was. Absolutely the best food I've every had in my life. I especially enjoyed the shrimp. These little guys are alive right up until the point you dip them into the vat. One actually hopped out of the bowl onto the table in a desperate attempt to make it to safety.

I guess I thought that would be it for the gastro-intestinal distress. I figure anything that hot would kill anything else. Unfortunately it was not to be the case. Over the next couple of days I ate literally anything and everything that came my way. I felt fine the whole time (once I was done w/the Chinese Fire Stomach). On Saturday morning I hopped on a plane bound for Penang, thinking I was free and clear. Once at the hotel, I felt a little more tired than I would have expected but I chalked it up to a day of flying and went to bed hoping to get up on Sunday to catch up on some work and maybe go out and about for a little bit.

It was not to be. I woke up on Sunday at about 7:00 a.m. with the worst diarrhea and vomiting I can ever remember. My day consisted of sleeping and purging, purgin and sleeping. I was unable to regulate my own body temp… either too hot or too cold… It was awful. I had to meet one of the Dell people at the airport at 5:00 and so I woke up and got a shower and made it without "incident" Then I went to the local clinic and got my hands on electrolytes, anti-diarrheal medication, anti-vomiting medication, anti-biotics and abdominal pain medication. The doctor admonished me to begin eating breads and porridge immediately and to drink as much water as I could because I was dehydrated to a dangerous level. She told me that if I did as she instructed I would feel fine by today.

Feeling fine is a relative thing. I feel fine if the baseline is how I felt yesterday. I'm able to keep down the food. I've not had any more "episodes". On the otherhand, I'm lethargic, I have a headache and I can't think very clearly. I don't know, but I feel like I may have lost several pounds. It really was a bad scene, but all seems to be better now.

God only knows what I ate that put me through it. None of the people from dinner on Friday night appear to have gotten sick, so I can only think it was something from the airplanes or the airports.

Anyway, that's it for now.