This Is Not My Post-BlogHer Post

Date: 2009.07.28 | Category: Health, Uncategorized | Tags:

It’s the story of how I do not travel well.

My body does not like stress. It does not like change. It does not like big changes in eating patterns. When I do any of that it’s like having the Bolshevik Revolution in my digestive system. The drive to Chicago wasn’t so bad. We had a well packed cooler. I didn’t have breakfast before we left and I had slept poorly (something that would continue for the next week). After decided that the ginger pills and ginger ale combination wasn’t working I popped a couple of Gravol, ate a Rice Krispie square and took a 30 minute nap. Somewhere near Ajax we demolished a bag of beef jerky. At a rest-stop near Woodstock I had a hamburger. Lee spent the day working through the leftover (homemade) pizza from the night before. We ate dinner at 11pm that night – Burger King take out. I had three bites of my salad and went to sleep.

Not a great start.

The rest of the trip wasn’t bad. We ate dinner with Denise and Tarrant the next two nights, including the night Tarrant made me meatballs and cheese grits because she loves me. (My grits never turn out anything like hers. I think it’s because I’m Canadian and know jack about grits.) Breakfast was pretty stable most of the week – yogurt, juice and coffee. Just like at home.

Midway through the week something happened. The day before the conference I was sick. Really quite sick. It didn’t stop me from doing too much (including drinking Gold Coasts, which I blame on Megan although I do think that perhaps they helped set me to rights). Things went fairly well during the conference, except that I forgot to plan dinner both nights which resulted in at least one late-night trip to McDonald’s for chicken nuggets because I needed something hot to eat and I needed it now (McDonald’s was the only thing we knew that would be open and knew where it was).

On the two day drive home I didn’t take so much as a ginger pill. I had half a can of ginger ale. That was it. I felt pretty good. Tired but good. Then less than half an hour after I went to bed last night (my. own. bed. for the first time in over a week) I was in the bathroom paying a sacrifice to the porcelain gods. Delayed motion-sickness? Exhaustion? Ate something bad on the road? Some combination thereof? I don’t know. I just know that instead of being at work this morning I stayed in bed. I know my stomach hurts. I know I’m sick and I don’t blame BlogHer Bola.

It’s just me. This is how I travel. The time I went to Europe? Less than a week after I got back I had the worst migraine I’d had in more than five years.

I’ll do it all again next year, possibly twice since we want to do both PEI and BlogHer 10.

But in the meantime, I don’t suppose anyone wants to make me some soup?