Gastritis!

...in which illness rears its ugly head.

While we were on holiday, there was one day where I had a fairly bad burning pain in my abdomen for most of the day. This eventually resulted in an extremely unpleasant night/morning where I got very little sleep because of having to stay in the toilet, for reasons I won't go into but are almost certainly exactly as horrible as you're imagining. The next day I felt a bit queasy but the pain had gone and I was generally fine, and continued to be so.

Until yesterday (Thursday). At about 3AM, I woke up with the same burning sensation that I had had on holiday, and was then stuck being awake because of the pain. I am very rarely ill, but by about 10:30 AM it was bad enough for me to call the doctor and ask for an emergency appointment (which is almost unheard of without a lot of nagging from A, but the fact this was a repeat of last week was a bit worrying).

The doctor diagnosed me with mild gastritis (if that was mild I don't want to think about what a serious case would feel like) and gave me some tablets that will reduce the acidity of my stomach juices. She also advised me to eat "bland" food for a while, 

She didn't really go into detail about this, so I did some research online and spoke to Saira about it; the basic advice is:

No alcohol, no coffee, no spicy food, no bacon (and nothing cooked with bacon or onions) and nothing acidic like citrus fruit etc.

Four out of the five things on that list coincide with my "list of things I really like to put in my mouth". It could be worse of course - it could be permanent, so I've probably got off fairly lightly as I should be OK after a couple of weeks of a bland diet. I still managed an hour in the gym last night (I took my first tablet at midday and the pain had mostly gone by the evening).

From a Slimming World perspective it's not too bad; I can still have lean meat and vegetables, and rice/pasta/potatoes, as long as they're well cooked and not cooked in sauce. I can have apples and pears and bananas; the coffee prohibition does bite hard though, since I usually need 2 cups of coffee just to be half awake in the morning. On the plus side, having no alcohol should help with my quest to get to target...I was 7lb away on Monday and am aiming to get as close as I can this week.

On Sunday I'm doing the Rainbow Run at Wrexham; this is a short (2 mile) run where they throw powder paint at you (they provide a white t-shirt). I'm a bit useless at getting sponsors (since I work at home there aren't many people to ask!) so I will make a donation to Nightingale House, the children's charity that the run is in aid of.