Happy Fart Day
January 11, 2007

Today is one of the happiest days of my life.  I'm calling it "Happy Fart Day."  Perhaps I'll celebrate this day annually from here on out.

The cause of my celebration begins about 48 hours ago.  It was 5:30am and my body woke me up and said "go to the bathroom tubby!"  And being one who is often very obedient to my body's instructions, I did just that.  Yep...you guessed it...diarrhea.  Yes yes, I know, it's not pleasant to discuss, so just stop reading now if it's too gross for you.  I'm trying to tell you about my happy fart day silly...what did you expect!?!

Sadly, I was awoken almost exactly every hour on the hour with trips to the bathroom and a lucky few of those hours I had the added bonus of vomiting.  I wasn't exactly sure what was wrong, but it felt exactly like food poisoning.  No one else, as far as I knew, who ate the same foods as me got sick, so I was confused.

This hourly bathroom visit pretty much lasted for over 24 hours.  No lie.  For over 24 hours actually, I went from my bed to the bathroom and back again.  I felt like I was writing "There and Back Again, by Bilbo Baggins" except my story didn't involve a ring that would bind them all, it involved one helluva ring around the toilet!

All day I just slept and went back and forth to the bathroom.  I had no appetite and only drank water and ate 2 tangerines and a few pieces of pears.  The next day (yesterday), I woke up feeling a little better and the bathroom trips weren't so hourly anymore.  I was still feeling pretty bad so I went to a friend of Yong Won's who is a doctor.  He said that I had an upset stomach from food that was incompatible with my stomach.  I think it was from something Korean's call "bone soup."  It's soup where they boil cow bones and add meat and vegetables.  It doesn't sound very appealing, but it's not too bad.  I've had it before, but I think the bowl I had a few days ago had a different type of vegetable that was just too rough for my stomach.  It was a root and I guess my body didn't like it at all!

Bone Soup

The doctor prescribed an IV (Intravenous therapy) because I was dehydrated and a shot for a splitting headache that I had.  I stayed there a few hours and felt a lot better when I left compared to how weak I felt when I got there.  Since then I'm getting better and better, but I'm still only able to periodically eat a small boil of soupy rice water because the doctor said that's all my stomach can handle right now.  The food that didn't agree with me has to get completely out of my system before I can eat normal foods again.

So, that brings me to today!  For the past couple of days, whenever I've had that "farting" feeling it meant water poo was about to fly out my bum.  Today, I took a chance and let a little one rip to see if my condition had improved enough to get back to a normal schedule of farting and...Eureka!  A fart was born!  I can fart again!  I can fart again!  Hallelujah, I can fart again!

And so, Happy Fart Day was born.  Now I bid you all to go out and have a celebratory fart...just not with Korean Bone Soup that is...

What I learned today about Korea:  1)  Bone Soup + Me = Water Poo.