Food Poisoning & Emetophobia

On Wednesday night I got the worst case of food poisoning I've ever had in my life. For normal people food poisoning is awful, but it's especially awful when you have a fun little problem called emetophobia. For those of you who are lucky enough to not be familiar with emetophobia, it is an intense, irrational fear or anxiety pertaining to vomiting (the same type of intense fear those with claustrophobia face).

I actually have not had emetophobia my entire life, I know I didn't have it as a child, but I was lucky enough to pick it up some time as an adult. I didn't even know it was a categorized thing that other people have too, until Adam looked it up on the Internet on Thursday while I was getting through the worst of my sickness. So I'm curious, do you or anyone else you know have this fun little phobia?

If so, here are some tips to help cope with emetophobia while sick (and just good practice if you're sick in general). These are the only things that allowed me to get through two days of horrible sickness.

• Have a spouse (or other loving family member or friend) be there to comfort you
  I know this seems silly, but if I didn't have Adam there telling me it would be okay I would have had a major panic attack (I almost did anyway). Panic attacks and vomiting don't mix well.
• “Prep” your bathroom
  Again seems silly, but it was essential for me. Adam was sweet enough to clean the bathroom for me at 3 in the morning, and especially the toilet, before I spent a good solid 24 hours in there. Then when I was too weak to get up and go back to bed, I had a pillow and blanket nearby where I could just lay on the floor and sleep. Plus, everything was cleared out of the way from around the toilet so I would have no obstacle courses.
• If you have long hair, make sure it is pulled back and out of the way
  The last thing you want is a terrible reminder of your fear getting in your hair.
• A toothbrush and tooth paste
  Get all reminders out of your mouth as soon as possible.
• Water or other drink
  Make sure you have something to drink when that round of fun is said and done. You want that taste out of your mouth, but more importantly, your body needs the fluids. As much as I didn't want to drink anything, Adam was good enough to remind me I had to drink to get better and that was incentive enough to sip liquids all day

Last thing, NEVER EAT CARL'S JR! I'm pretty sure that's what gave me the food poisoning. I guess that's what I get for cheating on my food plan and for eating fast food. I'm definitely cured from that!