Tummy Trouble

I just thought I would blog about our most recent - and ongoing - bout of tummy trouble.

We went on for ages when we first started the blog about our tummy troubles and the various drugs we were perscribed to try and sort them out. Since then we have been generally OK, but every now and then have been ill from something or other. For me, being ill, means about 24 hours of tummy trouble, so I eat sensibly and then it sorts itself out. We have found no rule, rhyme or reason to when and where we get ill. We, or people we know, have been ill once at most restaurants in Maadi, and even from cooking at home! Most times it goes away after a day, but a few times we have had to take other drugs when it has gone on for longer. We self-perscribe Antinel which is actually an antiseptic, rather than an antibiotic, and so clears the stomach out.

I had to take a five-day course of Antinel after we got back from Dahab and was hoping that with only two months left in Egypt I'd be able to make it home without needing to do so again - however this weekend was different!



On Friday I was really really ill - I couldn't stray very far from the bathroom at all, but thought that it could be a 24-hour thing again, so we went out for dinner and the opera as planned. I was wrong about it lasting just 24 hours and after spending the whole of the interval in the bathroom by the Second Act I think I was really quite dehydrated and had a terrible headache, aching bones and the shivers! I was close to saying I wanted to go home, but I had a sip of flat coke before the Third Act and felt much better. I headed to bed straight away and was sipping rehydrating solution all night. The next day I started on a new drug that the pharmacist gave me, Streptoquin, and stuck to Pocari Sweat, bread and couscous all day.

We think it must have been the fruit juice from the Khan El Khalili restaurant that I'd had the night before. We normally stay off fruit juices in places we don't know, but we thought this would be OK as the restaurant is very Western.

So that night (Saturday), mum and I had very plain couscous to eat but Scotty had our left-overs from La Rosa which we had on mum's first night (Thursday) - as it wasn't fair for him to be on plain food too. This was our error though! As the next day Scotty got really ill! So there must have been something in the pasta sauce that caused it. Poor Scotty was so ill that he went to the clinic at school and was told to "sit down, no lie down" while waiting to be seen and then was quickly sent home to rest. He, like me, got dehydrated and had the headache and achey joints. They stuck him straight away on a week course of Flagyl and Antinel.



So all in all - not a great eating expereince this week!! Much as we enjoy living here, this is one thing that I really wouldn't miss!!!