I have a few very odd questions that will require some explaining on my behalf.
Since I was a child I had a horrible fear of vomiting, likely from having a father who feared it, and whenever I caught the stomach flu, he would panic and swear and run around the house.
I hadnt caught the pukes in over ten years (I am now eighteen years old) until yesterday. I woke up around 7am very nauseous, and began vomiting and experiencing diarreah around 9am. What was interesting to me was that my stomach barely hurt at all- I just felt extreme nausea, which is uncommon to me. I also took my temperature numerous times and it became aware to me that I was not running a fever at all.
I began to wonder what exactly made me sick. I came up with three possible explanations.
- The stomach flu (despite all of my fervant handwashing I failed to protect myself from germs.)
- Food poisoning. (I had cheeseburgers about eight hours before getting sick.)
- This is the odd one- giving my girlfriend oral sex.
Now I know that all sicknesses have some sort of incubation period. I cycled through everyone I knew and didnt recall anyone having the flu around me, so I ruled out catching something. I am still stuck on the cheeseburgers, but I cant imagine sickness taking 8 hours to settle in after eating them. About how long does it take to experience the effects of food poisoning after ingestion?
Lastly I remembered reading one of your columns on oral sex- you spoke of germs that grow in the anus, I believe they were coliforms or something, and they often migrate to the reproductive organs by means of sweating and the like.
I had given my girlfriend oral sex the evening before I got sick- the same evening I ate the cheeseburgers. Which one of these three possibilities do you consider most likely? Should I be afraid to give my girlfriend oral sex? I have done it numerous times before and never caught anything- is there something wrong with my girlfriend?
You may never know what it was. Washing your hands frequently while good is not bar to contracting a disease from somewhere. Your hands touch all sorts of surfaces throughout the day that could contain who knows what. Most people these days have cause to be around many other people frequently. School classes, work, elevators, busses, cars, standing on the street corner…the list is a long one. While it you may seek to minimize your chances of catching a pathogen from somehwhere it is near impossible unless you live in a bubble.
As for having oral sex I say enjoy. Sex is not a hygienic practice but a helluva lot of people do it and get on just fine. Assuming your girlfriend is reasonable clean/takes care of her health don’t torpedoe your sex life because you might catch something. IANAD so perhaps this is wrongheaded advice but the once in 3 year 1-day stomach cramps seems a small price to pay for all the fun in between.
As for food poisoning with most (not all) types symptoms will appear 2-6 hours after ingesting the food. Some are no fun but you get through them and others can be life threatening. While cooking gets most of them some like Listeria are fairly resilient and may survive in a “rare” hamburger. Others may be killed by cooking but leave toxins behind. So while cooking is certainly a good idea towards safer eating it is hard to guarantee 100% safe food.
Bottom line is it is a dangerous world. All sorts of nastiness out there that wants to get us. Fortunately humans are fairly resilient and you probably fight off many, many germs all the time and never know it. Once in awhile something gets you and you are miserable. Such is life…I say enjoy it. Enjoy your girlfriend, enjoy your cheesburgers and so on. Using not much more than good sense with hygiene and proper food handling you should be fine most of the time.
As an aside I what sounds like exactly the same thing last Thursday/Friday. Woke up and 4 am and the results were not pretty (both ends). Besides feeling pretty abused from that ordeal I seemed to bounce back within 24 hours. Indeed my only aches and pains were from hugging the toilet too hard. No stuffy head, scratchy throat or anything. Only thing I ate were leftover from the night before which had been dutifully refigerated than thoroughly nuked (no problems from the night before eating it). No idea what it was…definitely not fun.
Not to freak you out or anything, but some people report having the worst 24-hour flu of their lives immediately before the first herpes outbreak of their lives. And oral sex is a legitimate transmission route.
::nitpick::
There is no such thing as the stomach flu.
Flu = virus affecting throat, respiration.
Oral sex = ingest some foreign bacteria = immune response.
Even clean folk have strange (to you) bacteria, and even areas that should be clean can have e-coli bacteria…although it might not take e-coli to ill you.
Could be something you ate (mild to moderate food poisoning), from…yes contaminated food. Quite common.
nitpick nitpick,
stomach flu exists as a name for that all over achy malaise and diaporesis that it shares with respiratory flu, and for about as long. A common assumption before microscopes when “had the fevers” could have meant anything
Now we call it flu, for influenza, a viral respiratory track infection, and acute gastroenterits for irritation to the GI track, could be bacteral, fungal, or chemical
we see plenty of both in my nursing, GI stuff is usually about getting it out NOW from both ends and if you can stay restful and hydrated you should be ok. A few pathogens are more aggressive and invade the bowel. They tend to produce bloody diarrhea and more worse symptoms, but plenty of those resolve with litte or no medications
during tonsil hockey you exchange germs with your girlfrind, but they tend to be better tolerated and you achieve equilrium, same is true for the nether regions, but the proximity to the rectum complicates thing. My believe, is that if you’ve eleminated they handful of nasty bugs through screening and good choices there’s no reason not to look for food poisoning at the Y
nitpick nitpick nitpick
People seek advice around here, and one common thing that happens is that people use ‘flu’ for everything, esp minor 24-hour stuff.
To fight ignorance, we like to point out that the FLU should be referred to as the flu and everything else like food poisoning or bacterial infections should be named accordingly.
First, the flu is a serious medical condition (relative to a 24-hour fight with a bacterial infection).
Second, the flu is a virus, and people are often ignorant to the difference between bacterial infection teatable with anitbiuotics and viral infections, which are not. With the overuse of antibiotics (and the potential harm they do anyway), it is an important distinction.
Around here, it is important to note the differences. It helps get everyone to understand the basics, and avoids confusion. It also keeps us from insulting people who have fought off serious cases of the flu virus.
It can take several hours for the effects of food poisoning to be felt. There’s a good possibility it could have been your cheeseburger, since beef is a notorious culprit of food poisoning. I got something nasty from eating contaminated beef jerky once. It took about 8 hours after eating it before the explosive diarrhea and nausea set in. I didn’t have a fever either.
IANAD but my vote goes for food poisoning. Last summer I had some take out chicken. I wasn’t able to sleep that night due to feeling uncomfortable, and as the night progressed I began feeling queasier and my stomach started to hurt. Not the doubled-over kind of pain, but the normal “Lawd I feel like utter crap” kind of pain I normally associate with being sick. Finally, around 7am, it all came to a head – or went into the head, if you prefer. After that I just laid down (after calling in sick from work) and found I could finally rest easier.
Since I hadn’t had sex the night before, nor had I really done much of anything else that I could think of that would put me in the path of some random pathogen, I deemed it food poisoning. Especially since prior to this incident it had been a good 15 years or more since I’d last vomited for reasons other than excessive drinking. (And even that only happened to me once, in my more care-free youth)