Alka Seltzer to the Rescue

On Thursday, I had an i-n-t-e-r-v-i-e-w in Atlanta that qualified as the most intense 4 1/2 hours in recent memory and included a quickly-eaten egg salad sandwich. For future reference, do not eat egg salad when nervous.

I felt fairly ill for the rest of the day, but marked it down to prolonged anxiety and tried to sleep it off. On Friday, the awful feeling resurged after dinner, but I dismissed it as the result of dwelling on all the things I said wrong in the i-n-t-e-r-v-i-e-w and the contemplation of possibly starting a new job, new life, etcetera and so forth, and on the other hand convincing myself that I'd flubbed the whole thing and would be back to square one. On Saturday, following dinner, the overwhelming nausea reared its ugly head.

I tried deep breathing and sitting upright while watching The Prestige, because I figured Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman would make me feel better. But the stomach pains and biting nausea refused to subside, and I started to worry that I was having a panic attack. After the movie, Justin and Eva asked me if I was okay. But I wasn't. I was positively green. And on top of that, my stomach was hard to the touch, which convinced me that an evil being was waiting to burst forth at any moment. Around midnight, Justin went to Walgreens to consult the all-night pharmacist.

The pharmacist figured that prolonged anxiety had caused me to brew a raging case of acid indigestion in my stomach that had gone unchecked for several days. Prescription? Two Pepcid AC chased by a double dose of Alka Seltzer. Ack. The remedy itself almost made me toss my cookies. But I am pleased to report that within ten minutes, my belly had deflated a bit to its normal gushy state and I didn't feel quite so sick. I'm pretty certain that if I were a superhero, my Achilles heel would be my stomach. With the nervousness and motion sickness, whatever my great powers were, all it would take to defeat me would be a series of speed interviews aboard a cruise ship.