I’m not a big fan of hiding stuff behind a cut, but since this post has some amount of grossness, I thought I’d warn anyone to either skip it, or at least put down your sandwich first.

So last Sunday night I ending up vomiting twice. At that time it looked like food poisoning. I was able to keep down water after that and wasn’t feeling seriously dehydrated, so I let it go at that. Then I started having a watery yellowish diarrhea. I tried treating it first with Seirogan, a Japanese anti-diarrheal that is popular here and has worked for me in the past. When that didn’t work, I moved up to Loperamide (Immodium). That still didn’t work.

I found a neat diagnostic chart that helps explain the possible causes of diarrhea. Working down through the chart, option six looked like the most likely, which is bacterial or parasitic infection. Some further searches show that Giardia and Cryptosporidium parasites are common in Taiwan.

So it was off to the doctor. Normally for internal problems I’d go to Dr. Liu, but his local clinic is only open at night, so went to another clinic around the corner. The doctor wouldn’t say for sure what it was, but here’s what he prescribed:

Berberine – Herbal intestinal anti-parasitic/anti-bacterial
Pinaverium – Relieves bowel irritation
Gascon – Google fails me on this one but sounds like an anti-acid
Loperamide – anti-diarrheal (which I was already taking)

My own investigation on the web had already come up with Giardia as a possibility, but I didn’t want to bias things, so I just told the doctor my symptoms over the week and let him use his best judgment. So when looking up the medicines it was nice to find that Berberine is used the treat Giardia, so apparently he has the same suspicion, even if he was non-committal in his diagnosis.

I was somewhat concerned about the “herbal” part of it though. I know that there’s a lot of herbal remedies that have actually been proved quite effective, but I also know that Chinese culture tends to have a bias in favor of herbal remedies even without any proof of effectiveness. Some further searching turns up medical studies that show that Berberine is nearly as effective as the medicinal treatments of Giardia though. So if that’s what I actually have, it should fix things up.

sms.ac is a service that promises exciting free messaging services on your phone. However, it turns out not to be so free and exciting, especially for anyone in your address book.

Don’t take my word for it. Google on ‘sms.ac’ and read the horror stories. When you sign up, your address book is uploaded to them. Everyone in it will get spammed multiple times (other sites say four times) trying to get you to sign up. If you actually give them your cell phone number, it turns out that most of the messages are premium services that get billed directly to your cell phone bill. Others even report getting charged for messages they didn’t even request. And on top of that, their legal department churns out threatening letters to anyone posting complaints about them, even if the complaints are completely true.

sms.ac is an anagram for ‘scams’.

Stay far away from this one. If any of your ‘friends’ gives them your address, send your ‘friend’ some of these links.

Was feeling pretty chipper on Sunday morning, just a little bit of a runny nose and slightly scratchy throat. So I decided not to wimp out and stay home just to fully get over it. Besides, some friends of the family were up to Taipei visiting from Tainan and my nephew Jason was going home to Hong Kong after a short visit, so it’d be good to get out with them for a while. The day went fairly well, and after getting home I was a bit more tired than normal so I went to bed a bit early, but I didn’t figure that was terribly unusual after being sick.

A few hours later I woke up because my cat was sitting up next to me staring at me instead of sound asleep down by my feet. That’s usually his way of saying he wants to go out. So I get up and let him out of the bedroom and lie back down. And then notice, boy do I feel terrible. After tossing and turning for a couple of hours, I end up on the floor of the bathroom getting rid of my dinner. After that I’m feeling better, so my wife helped me clean up and go back to bed. Slept for a couple of hours and then went through the same thing again. Finally was able to get back to bed and slept in pretty late and now feel OK. This looks like food poisoning, except I ate exactly the same food as eight other people here and NONE of them had any problems. Sigh.

I was again impressed that my cat seemed to know there was something wrong before I did, getting up to watch over me before I noticed I wasn’t well. After cleaning up he was rubbing up against me and then parked himself at the foot of the bed in “guard cat” position instead of sleeping for the rest of the night.

After tweaking the prescription I was given to remove the bad stuff, I’m feeling much better now and getting better too. It is quite a change from being knocked out from the medication.

Meanwhile, up to level 33 on the http://deathball.net/notpron/ game now.

The wonderful morning was soon ruined when my morning dose of medicine knocked me out and had me crawling back into bed. A few hours later I’m able to get back out. So obviously some of that medicine was *not* good for me. I also take Wellbutrin SR regularly. I was supposed to go back to the doctor for a followup this morning, so when I got un-comatose again, Maggie and I went over to see him. The doctor thought the antihistamine was the problem, and he didn’t want to take it out so instead he suggested I try just half instead. On top of that he noticed that he had under-prescribed one of the medications for me. He had prescribed for 60kg weight and I’m more like 100kg. And on top of that he added a new medication to the mix. He also told me only about one of the antihistamines in my set of medication. I should probably mention that we have National Health Insurance here, so I just pay about US$5 for doctor’s visit and medication, total, no matter how many medications the doctor prescribes.

So this time when we went downstairs to the pharmacy I made them write out what each and every thing was. Here is what I got sent home with today:

prednisolone – steroid (increased dosage)
ambroxol – reduces mucus viscosity
ibuprofen – pain-reliever/fever-reducer/anti-inflammatory
dextromethorphan – cough suppressant
pseudo-ephedrine – decongestant
carbinoxamine – antihistamine
diazepam(valium) – anti-anxiety
chlorpheniramine – antihistamine
noscarpine – anti-cough/anti-cancer
fenoterol – relaxes windpipe to breathe easier (added)

Presumably he added the fenoterol so I wouldn’t wake up choking on snot again.

So instead of just gulping down my pills, I did some drug interaction research. From what I found on the web, Wellbutrin interacts poorly with antihistamines and dextromethorphan. Opinions seem mixed on pseudo-ephedrine, but I was taking that before without problem. So for now I’m going to take out the two antihistamines and the dextromethorphan, and switch the ibuprofen to naproxen sodium which works better on me. The pseudo-ephedrine was combined in one pill with the antihistamine carbinoxamine, but I have some pseudo-ephedrine only pills here, so they can substitute. We’ll see how that works out. Next time I’ll have to make sure to say I’m allergic to antihistamines and dextromethorphan. And I’m definitely getting them to list out the medications and do my own research first before taking it.

Woke up today with no congestion, and other symptoms seem to be subsiding. Yay.

Then spending 20 minutes trying to get rid of it all.

Finally went to go see the neighborhood ENT Doctor today since my cold does not seem to be getting better any time soon. Got prescribed eight different medications including valium. So, um, I might not be too active for the next few days what with being drugged up and all.

Until then, check out http://deathball.net/notpron/ which is a devilishly clever and addicting series of puzzles. The first couple are pretty easy but then they get harder. I’m only up to level 10 of 107 so far. Good luck.

Even after taking a Naproxen Sodium before bed, woke up with a fever of 38.4C (101.1F) in the middle of the night. Took another and it was normal this morning.

Since I kept her awake half the night coughing up a lung, my wife pronounced me unfit to travel, so I’m staying home instead for two days of blessed quiet.