I was thinking about my fear versus the actual time of experiencing it the other day, I mean the actual tactile time of the act itself. This is what I came up with:

Being a White Male (yes male) in North America my life expectancy is around 76 Years give or take.

In my life I have actually thrown up maybe three times so far (not including a few dry heaves from heat exhaustion) and any other episodes that I may unfortunately experience in the future.

During those times the actual act of being sick (not being nauseous) was probably a total 6 physical minutes combined. I come to that number as I am usually done after the first purge. I may have had two or three bouts with it when I was very young as well. Plus any future events which have been few and far between. My longest span of time was 30 years without actually throwing up…. and that is too long, I will explain why later.

Ok, I know it is tough to think about for you but I am getting to my point.

The Numbers ————–

1 Year has 525,949 Minutes

76 Years = 39,972,124 Minutes

Actual Act of Being Sick In My Life = 12 Minutes

Percentage of my life I would have actually thrown up = 0.00003%

That is a very small percentage of my life and I like those odds. I know that it may not be a hyper accurate formula for me and could be different for you but that thought helped me to further digest the fear and help “put it to bed” so to speak along with my other methods.

As far as nausea goes that percentage would be much higher as nausea for me rarely ends in being sick. The most recent time that I actually threw up I had fought the nausea for 11 hours and was miserable, and to what end… to actually feel better!

Hang in there and more to follow…. Rich