The Trials and Tribulations of a Tired Tummy

It all began when my tummy gave up. On Saturday morning I was feeling fine. I was really happy as I had a stack of new books just dying to be read. That was at breakfast time. My tummy was fine all through the usual morning jobs, the weekend cleaning and getting ready for the last day of swimming this term. But when I was in the swimming pool it was a totally different story. I slipped over the edge with a little splosh. "I'm going to do heaps of laps today," I told myself. I pushed off the edge, ready to swim millions of laps. But after a few laps I felt a niggling pain somewhere around my tummy. "Oh well," I thought. "It's probably your imagination." I, being a rather silly kind of person, ignored the niggling pain and kept swimming. A few more laps made the niggling pain into something I knew wasn't my imagination. But as I said before I'm rather silly at times. "It'll probably go away soon," I decided and kept swimming. But it didn't go away and it get any better. After about eighteen laps I had decided that this wasn't just a little ache that was going to leave me alone. But I carried on a little longer. But the more laps I did the worse the ache became. At the end of twenty two laps my tummy was getting rather annoyed. It was insistent. No more swimming. "Stop! Stop!" It wailed at me. "I can't take any more swimming!" "I give up," I finally told it and pulled myself out. My tummy wasn't satisfied with that. I splatted over to Dad, water dripping from everywhere. Clothed and dry, I sat down with a book. But that annoying tummy wouldn't leave me alone. The pain just stayed and got worse. "Maybe some food will settle it," Dad suggested. "Why don't you eat your muesli bar?" I wasn't too sure, and in any case I wasn't hungry. But anything that might stop my tummy being sore would be welcome. It didn't work. So I sat and tried to read while Sophie and Gemma-Rose swam happily. "You don't look too good," Mum said when we got home. "She's got a sore tummy," Dad told her. I was sent off to wash the chlorine out of my hair. Lunch was made when I was finished. But sandwiches and left over dinner didn't sound good to my tummy. "I don't want sandwiches," my tummy moaned. I wholeheartedly agreed with it. Thankfully Imogen came to my tummy's rescue with some soup. The tummy didn't mind soup too much and finally it was happy for a few minutes. But the calm didn't last. My tummy began to ache again and ached all the way from lunch to dinner. I was getting rather desperate for it to stop after that. And to top it all I got a nasty headache. From half past ten to bed time is quite long enough for any tummy to hurt. I woke the next morning and carefully checked for signs that my tummy was still upset. I couldn't find any pain and hoped that it might have gotten better. "I can go to mass then," I thought and wriggled out of bed. But I knew something was wrong when I got out of the van. My tummy wasn't hurting, but there was the feeling that it might happen at any second. My feeling wasn't wrong. Part way through mass I felt a jab of pain in that annoying tummy. "I'm sore again," the tummy announced. "Uh oh," I thought, "here we go again." Of all the places it could have chosen to hurt and it chose the middle of mass. But though it hurt and ached I made a discovery. Sore tummies do not like high notes. The tummy wasn't happy for the rest of the day. Even cocoa pops and crumpets couldn't make it feel any better. But I did get to read a lot. My tummy couldn't stop me from doing that. Thankfully my tummy is better now and I can do more than just read a book and feel miserable. I don't really want to repeat that particular experience but at least I got a post out of it.