Ow!

I have dealt with and been dealing with various stomach upsets for decades now.  I am usually pretty good at knowing what set off or triggered a stomach issue, and I'm usually able to match a symptom to a food.

Like, too much gluten for too many days in a row?  That's a sharp stabbing pain right *there* (points to the location).  Certain candies?  A combo of pain and reflux felt in the esophagus more than the stomach. Etc. etc.  I've gotten pretty good at knowing what did it (garlic, onion, etc.) and how to help it settle down a bit more.  (Weirdly, no idea why, but often sugar will settle my stomach.  Go figure.  7Up is a go-to for upsets.)

Which is why I'm quite confused by whatever has been going on with my stomach for the last few days.... 

It started almost a week ago now with me having some DELICIOUS in season local fruit (as I have done for weeks and weeks now... quite happily) with my mid morning meal and then getting nauseated.  That was weird.  I thought about what I'd eaten and none of them were trigger foods so maybe it was just a random nausea?  (Nausea is my least fave, but usually I have stuff I can take to shut it down pretty quick.)

The next day I had different fruit and the same thing happened.  Nausea right after.  What on EARTH was going on?

I wondered if maybe the fruit had some kind of issue (bacteria or spoilage or something?) but with it being cherries and then blueberries that didn't seem likely (plus I wash things, not that that's perfect but still.)  Hmm.... I started to get suspicious that something bigger than "bad fruit" was going on.

I know I've been having a LOT of dairy lately.  In my efforts to up my protein, I've been having either greek yogurt or Skyr every night (they're both pretty decent in protein) and because I'm not good with dairy anymore I've been taking lactaid and it's been fine.

But I wondered if maybe it hasn't actually been fine and I have irritated my stomach and the fruit just happened to set it off.  Maybe I had too many days of dairy in a row rather than having something else some nights.  So I cut that out of my diet for that night.

I also got rid of what was left of the fruit as it was still setting off nausea, and that was a real bummer, but just in case it was the cause somehow.

I can't remember how many nights in it was, but I hadn't had dairy for probably three or four days at this point, and at about 3am that night I was woken up by a very painful stomach.

Pain in a way I did not recognize.  As I said above, I'm usually able to pinpoint what kind of stomach pain it is and know how to deal with it.  This wasn't a recognizable pain to me.   I wasn't able to sleep or lie on my side, I could only be on my back for it to be bearable so I got out of bed and went to the bathroom.  That was, to be polite, uneventful so it's not like it was gas pain or needing to go to the bathroom or anything and my stomach felt rock hard.  Maybe a little sticky out, and hard to the touch.  It was weird and not something I'm used to.

I started to wonder about food poisoning but I didn't have any other digestive symptoms, just the pain.

I went back to bed and still wasn't able to be in a side position so I just lay on my back and hoped I would fall asleep which I eventually did, but it wasn't a great night due to that whole "woken up by pain" thing.

I tried to take it easy on what I ate the next day and I was in a weird limbo of kind of being hungry but also being afraid of eating in case it caused pain or nausea or something.

I think it was yesterday when I woke up thinking "ok, I think my stomach is better now" and I figure that is about five days.  I'm still avoiding dairy... am kind of scared of it to be honest.  

I have no actual idea of what went on (or is still going on but just mildly?)  Did I have mild food poisoning?  Have I had too much dairy for too long?  Did I catch a flu bug of some sort?  I really don't know.  I just know that my stomach was getting nauseated from fruit (which has never been an issue for me before) and then I had a nasty middle of the night stomach pain and I don't know what happened or how to stop it from happening again.  And I'm worried about how to get my protein at night now if I'm not ok to take the yogurts.  (Protein at night is helping my mental state, I've just not gotten around to writing about it yet but trust me I need that protein at night... and not something "heavy"... and no, I'm not great with beans... sigh)

So yeah.  My stomach was painful enough to wake me up and I don't know why that happened.  (And yes I have had a little bit of fruit as of yesterday and I wasn't nauseated so thankfully I didn't suddenly become allergic to fruit.)