Sunday, August 07, 2005

Thwacked by Lactose Goons

Most adults in the world, after the so-called "weaning period", have lost the ability to effectively digest milk sugar as the body produces increasingly less lactase, the enzyme necessary for proper metabolization. Some degree of lactose intolerance, carrying symptoms of excess gas production and diarrhea, will likely be experienced by adults, unless of course one carries that Northern European derived mutation on chromosome-2.

Which. I. Clearly. Do. Not. Have.

Feeling like my small intestines have been wringed tightly around the mangle that once served as my colon, I am desperate for a male version of Pamprin [Manprin?], anything to relieve these sweat-inducing man-cramps that besiege me. So explosive was the result of last night's eating of pizza at il Patio that I could not even make it onto the Yekaterinburg-bound train today, the very image of my clammy carcass spending all day and night on the rolling commode that opens directly to the tracks below making me dither with dread.

The exquisite violence erupting inside my gastrointestinal tract tells me that Yekaterinburg is now one, perhaps two more days away.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't start my day with coffee. I start my day reading about explosive lactose intolerance hundreds of miles away.

4:14 PM GMT  
Blogger Jon said...

Last summer, I had about 0.25 ounces of Yak cheese (don't ask), which was enough to give me straight diarrhea for 3 straight days. One of those days included a 12 hour bus ride through the mountains.
Usually a cup of milk will do it to me; perhaps Yak dairy has a higher concentration of lactose, but yeah, I feel your pain.

4:56 PM GMT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My first log-in in two weeks, and it's about your explosive intestines. Ah, I miss you, Rod. Terribly sorry to hear about your gastric distress; there's nothing worse than stomach ailments when one travels.

I just returned from Canada, where the heat actually forced me into the depths of Lake Huron (after refusing to swim with my little nephews and being dubbed "Aunt Wussie"). The icy water felt good after the sweltering 95 degrees in the cabin. The trip was good--our only casualties were my father's rash of poison ivy, which continues to plague him, and my massive hangover after drinking too many Smirnoff Ice's, which in Canada actually have vodka--7% alcohol. A far cry from the malt beverage they sell in the states.

Glad to finally catch up with the blog. And glad you are still safe and relatively healthy.

Kathryn

10:55 PM GMT  
Blogger Big Dave said...

Oh yeah, lactose intolerance. Got a touch of that myself. Perhaps dairy isn’t your best source of protein either. Kinda hard to absorb nutrition into the system when the system is using all of its resources to purge the “foreign” object. And those cramps are a bitch … I recall one night on the crapper … horrible sweating, weak to the point of barely able to stay seated on the toilet, the cramps so bad I seriously didn’t think the walls of my colon could bear the pressure. My mind began to hallucinate about newspaper headlines a few weeks later after they found my body … “Man dies on toilet – Colon explodes” … very embarrassing way to go. Not a very proud legacy to leave behind. Well I for one am going to stop giving nutrition advice.

Actually, no matter what your normal food lifestyle is, it’s almost impossible to travel for an extended period of time in foreign countries and not have at least one good diarrhea story. Mine was in Nepal, the night before a - you guessed it - 12-hour bus ride over the mountains … can I get an Amen Jon? I took just enough Imodium to choke it off until the halfway stopping point and then again at the end of the ride … close call. You see if you actually have a bug (and not just lactose intolerance) it’s not a good idea to stop the flow completely because you’ll keep the bug inside.

All right then. Hopefully tomorrow will bring more pleasant subjects back to the travel log … like a nice mugging.

D

4:37 AM GMT  
Blogger Jess said...

I think I remember hearing in the last couple days that a whole bunch of people die every year from "toilet accidents," whatever those are.

I thought you were vegan. What are you doing eating cheese?

9:45 PM GMT  

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