Moctezuma’s Revenge Has Struck Me

So about two days ago, I had to cook some remaining beef I had in the fridge.

It was about 2 days expired but I’ve cooked beef before that was a day or 2 expired without any problem.

However, once I put the beef onto the pan, I noticed one of the pieces looked a bit weird.

A bit greyish or whatever.

“Eh, it’ll be OK” I thought.

So I turned on the stove and that was it.

Now while I was eating it, I did notice it didn’t taste as nice as the serving I made the day before.

Regardless, it didn’t taste too weird and that was it.

Now despite my day having started off well where I was full of energy and everything…

Quickly enough, I started to feel very lethargic for some reason.

I chalked it up to maybe not having enough Vitamin D in my system because I knew I hadn’t been outside very much that day since I was doing shit inside my apartment.

So I decided to take a walk outside and stop by a park to sit down at.

Along the way, I bought a liter of orange juice and thought that maybe it’ll give me a little bit of energy needed with the sunlight also.

Nope!

Not by much.

Still a little bit lethargic.

It didn’t help either that my body was aching all around from having done a long ass workout the day before.

My legs and my arms were feeling a bit sore.

Anyway, as I was walking towards the park, I saw some random motorcycle dude with his helmet on laying on the ground with the police standing by.

Not sure what happened to him though.

He looked awake with his eyes open blinking.

Anyway, I kept on walking and sat down.

Then, sometime later, I got up and sat down at another park.

Feeling so lethargic and tired, I chalked it up to maybe needing a nap.

So, at around 7 PM, I got back home and laid in bed.

When I woke up some odd hours later, I did feel a little bit better but ultimately became lethargic pretty quickly again.

And a lot more noticeably sick.

All of a sudden, I had diarrhea,  

And, while eating some pasta I cooked for myself, I noticed how I wasn’t eating it very well.

Something in me just didn’t feel like eating the damn thing.

And, after one last bite, I noticed some impulse inside me that wanted to vomit.

So I laid on my bed thinking “well, the impulse will go away.”

Nope!

A minute later, I get going “OK, better get to the bathroom.”

And it happens.

Standing outside of my bathroom half naked, I’m feeling a little bit better now after having thrown up.

Lay in bed again despite not being tired enough to fall asleep…

And that was the remainder of yesterday.

Where I didn’t have anything left to eat and just laid in bed all day until I could fall asleep.

in short, over the last 2 days, I probably consumed a total of 1,300 calories at most.

So when I woke up, I was feeling a bit lightheaded.

Went to the bathroom.

Noticed my stomach being smaller than before from the lack of food obviously.

Oddly enough, the lack of food over the last 2 days didn’t make me feel too hungry when I woke up today.

There were moments when the hunger would kick my stomach but then go away quickly a second later.

Anyway, I laid back down until about 6 or 7 AM.

Laid back down again.

And now I’m typing this right here at 9:30 AM.

Thankfully, I have a little bit more energy in me because I know I need to withdraw some money at the nearby supermarket to pay rent today.

Still, I guess there’s a bit of irony in all of this somehow…

When people talk about “food sickness” in Latin America, they talk about it always from the idea that the local food will make you sick.

Just the other day, I was reading a Facebook comment of someone asking for advice on their trip to Mexico City…

And some lady in the comment section was warning her quite strongly “DO NOT eat the street food! DO NOT EAT THE STREET FOOD EVER!”

Funny enough, had I chosen street food that day over the expired beef, I most likely wouldn’t have gotten sick.

Especially as I have eaten street food all the time down here several times a week with no problem.

Still, something could be said that, as I wrote here, how people prepare the local food down here does tend to be worse than how it is prepared up in the US.

Mostly with sanitation issues and all.

But I guess I can’t complain about that when I chose to eat expired beef?

Still, a bit of irony in it all anyhow….

That, as of now, this is my 2^nd time ever in 6 years down in Latin America where I have ever gotten anything that looked like food sickness or food poisoning.

And this time happened to not be the fault of the locals but more of myself.

The other time, as you can read here, was when I was in Nicaragua many years ago.

Back then, I went to a place called Masaya in Nicaragua where I was doing some volunteer construction work with a group of other Americans.

On one particular morning, we all had the same lunch at the hotel kitchen and everyone except one chick in the group got violently sick.

During that incident, my food sickness was a shit ton more extreme than what I just experienced now.

Where I was vomiting every hour literally and wondering “am I going to the hospital?”

Which one of the chicks in the group ultimately did go to the hospital because she couldn’t stay hydrated enough.

The food sickness I just felt was more of an annoyance than anything.

Vomited one time.

Very lethargic.

A bit of diarrhea.

Lack of energy all around.

And, though the last 4 issues are no longer bothering me, I feel very lightheaded as I type this.

Again, that is likely because of the lack of calories over the last 2 days.

I got this pasta here that I didn’t finish from 2 days ago that I’m going through.

Don’t want to eat anything fried or greasy at all – so that leaves out a lot of street food.

Honestly, a salad sounds nice right now even though I literally never eat salads ever.

I can’t remember the last time I had a salad because I don’t eat them.

But something like that sounds nice.

Or a cold sandwich with some ham in it.

With some orange juice.

There we go – got my meals planned out for the day and I’m sticking to it.

Hopefully I regain my energy again soon.

So what’s the lesson of the story?

Don’t be an arrogant jackass who thinks expired beef that looks questionable will be fine to cook.

I’ve had countless times down here where I never got sick despite all the other foreigners bitching in their panties about how “the local food will kill you!!”

And I never get sick ever.

End up arrogant thinking “eh, this beef will be alright.”

Anyway, drop any comments below.

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Thanks for reading.

Best regards,

Matt