Bad Bacon or Why I can no longer eat bacon.

So I recently had food poisoning. Twice.

It started when I found a packet of bacon in the fridge. I wasn’t sure when I had bought it but the use by date was okay and it both looked and smelled fine. I was hungry and if I wanted to eat anything else it would have meant several hours of defrosting so I popped the bacon in a pan with a couple of eggs.

It tasted a little bit strange but I’d eaten stranger things and I went about my life happily. That is until about 5 am the next morning when my eyes whipped open and I sat up in bed. I’d woken up because I was convinced I was about to die. My stomach was churning and my head was on fire and I kept letting out these weird fizzy burps that made my entire body shudder. Groaning I made my way from my bedroom up the stairs to the bathroom. I thought I was going to throw up. I did not want to throw up. I sat next to the sink curled into a ball clutching a towel. Every time I felt the gorge rise I would hiss to myself ‘No you don’t, don’t you dare puke’ and dig my fingernails into my hand. This went on for an hour and a half. I never stopped belching the entire time. I started to feel a little better, I had little half moon wounds all over my palms, but I didn’t want to puke anymore. I staggered downstairs and lay on my bed. The room started to spin. I convinced myself that if I tried to go back to sleep I would never wake up so I sat up and went into the living room. I sat down on one of the leather sofas and put my head against the cool leather.

That was where my mum found me in the morning.

I felt fairly normal by then, my stomach was a little tender so I only had dry crackers for breakfast but I could function enough to drive several miles and go to my classes.

Now the fact that I had had the bacon in the morning and had eaten several other meals that day had me confused as to what was the cause of my freak and sudden illness. Everyone I told about it goggled at me and wondered if I was pregnant. I laughed loudly at this suggestion, but quietly in my own head I wondered that too. I was counting days and planning tests so I wasn’t really thinking. If I had been what followed probably wouldn’t have happened.

A couple of days later I was busy working and it was late at night and I had a yearning for pancakes. I don’t even know what made me do it. It was one of the stupidest ideas I have ever had. Making pancakes at midnight. But I did it anyway and as I was rummaging in the fridge I spotted the packet of bacon. The use by date still hadn’t passed and I though ‘hmmm, pancakes and bacon… sounds good. I even have some maple syrup’ and the dreaded bacon was thrown into the pan yet again. I gobbled up my food and settled to do my work. I felt fine. I went to bed.

I woke up the next morning and it felt like an alien parasite was trying explode out of my stomach. I staggered into the living room weeping. My mum was suggesting all kind of remedies and she even made me hot water with lemon in it. I was curled up into a ball so tight you would think I was trying to climb inside my own body. Then all of a sudden it happened. It was just like in comedies where a character throws up and you can tell they’ve just put a hose behind their face. My mouth opened and everything I’d ever eaten in my entire life came flying back out.

There was pandemonium as I tried to get to the bathroom in time. I puked and puked and puked. I spent the rest of the day with a hot water bottle on my stomach sipping hot lemon water and every time I moved an inch I puked again.

I figured out it was the bacon. I used to love bacon but now I can’t eat it ever again. Just smelling the stuff makes me heave. It’s really hard to eat something once you’ve seen it in reverse.