The Omnivore´s Dilemma

Since January 4th, 2008 I have been a vegetarian. Perhaps it´s strange that I remember that specific day so vividly, but it remains a day (and an experience) that is hard to forget.

On this cold wintry Wisconsin night, I ended up in the Madison Meriter Hospital´s Emergency Room due to major stomach pains. There was a blockage in my intestines that left me with intense pain and the inability to force myself out of the fetal position. I was fortunate enough to have my parents take me to the hospital after finding me on the floor of my college apartment. $698 in hospital bills, countless bloodwork and stomach tests later, I was out of the ER, thinking about what I had eaten that day (sausage pizza) and proclaimed henceforth to fill my life with legumes, leafy greens, garbanzos, peanut butter and Very Vanilla soy milk.

It has been over a year now since that hospital visit. And yet I have faithfully remained a vegetarian, through thick and thin, through trips to Mexico and Africa, and living in Spain, the jamón serrano capital of the world. Although I constantly face ridicule from my pork eating Cuban boyfriend and misunderstanding from the older women teachers at work who every day at lunch sound like the Greek mother in ¨My Big Fat Greek Wedding¨ ... WHAT?!? Chu don´t eat no meat?? But jamón serrano is different. Hay que probarlo hija.

Yet this past weekend while in Lisbon, I managed to end up in an emergency room again with more stomach problems. Only this time my parents weren´t around to take care of me. Did I mention I don´t speak portugese? 5 hours, 9.40 euros, and many rocky conversations in both English and Spanish with kind and helpful Portugese doctors, later I was back at our hostel, completely exhausted, dehydrated and worn out from the past 18 hours of being in and out of Lisbon bathrooms. What was ¨supposed¨to be a crazy, party weekend with my 5 best girlfriends ended up, at least for the first 2 days, to be a painful trip. I was, quite literally, the party pooper.

All of these stomach problems and hospital visits in the past year (had another episode in Barcelona back in December) lead me to question whether my stomach issues are at all connected to the food I eat. Or perhaps I just have a sensitive stomach, or something even more serious. Before Lisbon´s incident, I had only eaten pasta, the bland noodles and olive oil kind. It leaves me in an ¨omnivore´s dilemma¨... do I continue to exclude meat from my diet? The reason I did so in the first place was to prevent another ER visit, but this clearly hasn´t mattered. However, I enjoy being a vegetarian, more health conscious and more aware.

Perhaps a Spanish digestivo (gastroenterologist) can help me begin to resolve all of this next week. Ya veremos.