Last week, this reporter was for several days down for the count. On Monday night after a night of live music, I came home happy, went to bed and then at 2 a.m woke up with an obvious need to use the restroom. That need returned again and again. Yep, I had what we used to call the “runs”. (Note the word is plural.). Don’t know where the problem came from, but it had me in its clutches for hours. I remembered that I once had pills for such a problem, but I was either too busy or too weak to make more than a cursory look for the pills. Finally after about 12 hours of making the local lavatories feel important, I gathered up the strength tp take all the medicines out of an overcrowded medicine cabinet and from the back row, I found Imodium. Hadn’t used it for years, but thank God, I still had it. I barely could see the directions, but using a light and a magnifying glass, I found that initially I could take two pills and was warned that I might be dehydrated as well. The two pills worked (after a while), and I struggled down a couple glasses of water.

The thing that surprised me about all this was just how out of energy and tired I was for days…so much so that I spent almost two days in bed. As a world-class eater with virtually no food allergies, I wasn’t hungry either. Offer me a chocolate sundae and I would have waved it away..that’s how dire the situation was. A couple days later the good news was…I had lost five pounds.

So what does one do during an adult siege of this kind? Just like when I was down for the count following gall bladder removal, I turned on Turner Classic Movies and just let it run, movie after movie nap after nap. When I could gather my wits I might switch to a shopping channel. Did you know that a current short skirt was “on trend” but not “trendy”? True.

Thursday night, feeling a bit more adventurous, I flipped channels until I found a Jennifer Anniston movie on VH-1. I swear, after every two sentences of dialogue came a commercial. Made me love TCM even more.

And yet I was always tired. I must have gotten four days sleep in two days.

Wednesday morning I typically have breakfast with Chicago friends and because the condition had been quiet for many hours by then, I dragged myself to the shower, got dressed and made it to breakfast. My friends there said more than once, “You don’t look good.” But I had makeup on and everything!

Home after breakfast, I was back taking it very easy…very. The next day I had a scheduled hair appointment and no self-respecting female misses those, so I got myself together again. My hairdresser heard my whole story and noted that “stomach flu is going around.” Maybe…

Home again I called a couple friends, one of whom mentioned the need to replenish electrolytes. So when another friend offered to come over I asked if the friend could pick up some Gatorade. The Gatorade arrived, but I found it was hard to drink. When I finally finished the 20-oz bottle, I looked at the label — 140 calories! I remember Gatorade from the 1960s and wasn’t it calorie free? When I looked up Gatorade on Wikipedia, I realized I had missed a whole world of Gatorade history.

What did my adult case of stomach problems teach me? Three things: (1) to put the Imodium pills front and center in the medicine cabinet if needed; (2) to be grateful, at my age, that my hips and knees are in good enough shape that I can make runs to washrooms when needed and (3) I (and my friend who picked up the Gatorade) need to be more current on liquids featuring electrolytes.

Anybody want six bottles of 140-calorie Gatorade?