Published in On Our Selection News August 1, 2013

I hate bugs.

Not the beetle kind of bugs, they aren’t bad guys at all; it’s the stomach bugs of the world that are the real menaces.

I say this with a fresh sense of hatred off the back of festivites over the weekend. I, like many of my footlose and fancy free peers, headed along to the Splendour in the Grass music festival near Byron Bay.

On the second night I was jovially strolling into the festival without a care in the world, ready to drink in the goodness of Empire of the Sun and The National when the blessed stomach bug struck. And oh Lordey did it strike fast.

Within minutes of feeling as though I was “in a bad place”, I was on my hands and knees violently emptying the conents of my stomach onto the muddy ground. Unfortunately, the phrase “once you pop you cannot stop,” (a phrase made famous by Pringles, which coincidentally, I had been enjoying earlier in the day) and the great stomch emptying continued into the night. As the National was reaching the climax of “Mr November” (youtube it and then you will know how devestating it was that I missed it), I was writhing around on a jacket that some kind soul had laid over the mud so I could sit as I dry-reached.

It wasn’t until the next morning, when I discovered that I couldn’t hold down toothpaste and was shaking like a leaf, that I was advised to go to the medic tent.

This was a place that I never hoped I would end up. The medic tent was a place for hardcore pill takers and people who jumped off poles into a crowd of waiting security guards, not for little old me. I was a dignified person and I did not belong in a medic tent. Or so I thought.

It turned out that this was no time for dignity; alas, I believe my dignity was on left in a chunky puddle in the festival the night before. After stumbling in and crying to the red frogs volunteers, it turned out that I was in exactly the right place.

(Incidentally, I found out that I wasn’t the first small town journo who drunk fluids with my veins. Either us rural news hounds have  really know how to party, or we have terrible immune systems. I suspect it was a lot from Column A and a little from Column B.)

I was told that I had picked up a severe bug that had been going around the campsite, was promptly put on a drip, and immediately regetted not bringing my phone to photograph the evidence of this experience.

From this low point of my life, I took in a few lessons. Lesson Number One: anti-nausea drug maxolon works fast (I could pinpoint the exact moment that my stomach stopped churning and it was glorious); Lesson Number Two: music festival medics are greatly appreciative of patients whose ailments are not drug or alohol related; and Lesson Number Three: there is such a thing as a “gastro drawer”.

With a renewed sense of appreciation for the medical advances in our society, I sprung back to the campsite and headed into the festival, sporting my taped-on cottonball like a badge of honour.

Bugs are indeed the worst; they strike at the least convenient moments, they steal your dignity and they essentailly turn you into some kind of sub-human. But this is where Lesson Number Four comes in: if you can find the silver lining to losing most of your stomach lining, you can still come out on top.