Three months ago I had a violent stomach bug. I never spent a night puking for so long and so hard in my life. The next day, I lay on the couch eating (saltless) Saltines and watching old movies because my stomach was so upset.
I figured it would go away in a day or two. And it didn't. And didn't.
For weeks, I kept discovering foods I dared not eat for getting killer heartburn. Anything with tomatoes. Anything with vinegar.
Cutting out tomatoes was tough. A lot of what I eat has tomatoes as a base. So I ate my spaghetti with Parmesian cheese and herbs (as my friend Lee Rowan used to make--and probably still does). I had no Indian food for two l-o-n-g months. Nothing seemed to work for me, despite the bottles of Malox I drank, and the hundreds of antacid tablets I downed, until I found Prelief. (I should take out stock in the company.) I'd down a couple (okay, maybe as many as five) of these little white pills and it neutralized the acid. Gradually, my stomach healed enough to reintroduce these acidic foods.
Except for one thing: tea.
Now, for as long as I can remember, I have started my day with a cup (or pot) of tea. I had to give up caffeine back in the 1980s, and learned to love decaf tea. (Okay, ENGLISH decaf tea. There's a big difference in taste. American teas are pretty wimpy.) Even with seven Prelief tablets, nothing seemed to help. To add insult to injury, I'd purchased 11 boxes of my favorite Typhoo tea (that's 880 tea bags) just about the time this all started.
I was letting myself have one cup of tea a week to see if the old stomach could handle it. Usually I choose Mondays, figuring I'd have the rest of the week to recover before I tried again. It was only a week ago that I had a cup of tea and didn't get heartburn. That made me braver. I tried again (only that time I didn't have anything to eat with the tea). Ugh. Heartburn. So I tried with food (and Prelief) again. Ah, success! Yesterday, I had tea with just Prelief. Yea! No heartburn. And I've done it again today. (Okay, it's kind of early, but I've got my fingers crossed.)
I can't tell you how wonderful it has been to have that one cup of tea most mornings for the last week. Oh how I've missed it. But it's only one cup. I can't wait until I can get back to drinking a whole pot of tea and without taking Prelief first. On that day I will celebrate--with another cup of tea.
Have you had to give up something you love to eat or drink, and how did you handle it?
