I'm unsure of how to even describe the past few days. My body aches, my head is throbbing and yet I'm filled with gratitude that I've kept down a handful of Saltines over the past couple of hours. It's that bittersweet gratitude that can only mean one thing: the end of a disaster, the climb up from the merciless bottom. Oh, this stomach bug got us good.
Tuesday evening I woke up to my husband asking me to hold Ethan because he'd vomited in his crib and he was changing his sheets. Let me stop here and tell you a little about my husband: he underreacts. The house could be on fire and he'd begin his rationalization process and calmly think of an exit plan as if he had all the time in the world. I'm the opposite. At the mere mention of "Ethan vomited," I felt my blood pressure sky rocket and my heart started galloping. You probably could have institutionalized me. In his typical so-calm-he's-barely-breathing fashion, my husband concluded that he'd given Ethan a few bites of his chili before bedtime and it obviously upset his stomach. I know my child well enough to know there isn't much that can upset his stomach and, hey, I put a lot of work into that chili! But my husband insisted and so I went back to bed and he went back to finishing some work out in the living room. Less than an hour later, I awoke to screaming. Blood curdling, horrible screams coming from Ethan's room. He wouldn't stop vomiting. (Did I forget to mention how I was thinking just this very morning how Ethan had never had a stomach virus and hadn't puked since his newborn reflux days? Surely this was all my fault for jinxing it.) My husband continued to rationalize and blame my chili and I continued to freak out that something was wrong -- and then when poor Ethan's little body started shaking and he was just screaming his throat raw in between projectile vomiting, I knew something was wrong. When my painfully calm husband looked up at me and confirmed the ER we were taking Ethan to, I knew that I had reason to panic. It was in that moment I realized how very much I rely on my husband's tranquility despite my always insulting it. When he panics, well, I can't even see straight with worry.
So we ended up in the emergency room in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Ethan had his first stomach bug. His vomit was dripping through my shirt and onto my toes. The nurse brought over a large syringe filled with pink liquid. Zofran, she explained, for the nausea. She didn't need to explain Zofran to me. That stuff got me through my first two trimesters, at least in the sense I was no longer having to carry a bucket around with me on my errands. Of course, the Zofran I knew came in little white pills that dissolve under your tongue, not a gigantic needle that they told me they'd be sticking into his thigh. But before I could continue to panic, they stuck it into his thigh, he was wailing, I was wailing and within fifteen minutes, he was smiling. He didn't end up falling asleep until it was almost time to wake up on Wednesday morning and my husband, unable to recognize the inevitable calm before the storm, went to work on Wednesday.
Ethan and I spent Wednesday reading while I tried to force water and coconut water down his throat. I counted wet diapers -- surely there weren't enough for all he was drinking -- and wished I had less of those other diapers to count. After pharmacy hopping and obnoxious arguments with pharmacists about why Ethan couldn't possibly wait until next week to have his prescription filled, my mom found us a pharmacy to fill his (orally administered, thank goodness) Zofran and the rest of Wednesday was frighteningly smooth sailing. Ethan's recheck with his regular doctor was Thursday morning. I felt off. My stomach was upset. I chalked it up to nerves and anxiety. After dealing with Ethan's bout with RSV last year, I don't handle his sicknesses very well. By the time we got back into the car to leave the pediatrician, I was holding a plastic Walgreens bag over my face and preparing to vomit. Here we go. Sparing you the gory details, my husband and I both caught the stomach virus of doom and have been juggling caring for a toddler on the mend while being the sickest I can remember being in, oh, ever. I spent most of yesterday throwing up so hard that my nose was bleeding and it looked like the scene from a horror film. My husband likes to keep telling me the story of how I was so feverish and delirious that I wasn't making any sense when I talked. I'll spare you the story of how he learned his lesson on why you don't feed a virus and chug Gatorade and Coke while actively throwing up. It hasn't been a very pretty few days in our house.
I'm trying to find positives in all of this because right now I feel utterly destroyed and feel like I'll never be able to outrun the germs lingering in this house. So far all I can think of is that it's endearing how putting on hand sanitizer is Ethan's new favorite activity (we've gone through an entire bottle the past couple of days!) and it's even cuter to watch him (try to) eat a popsicle.
Outside, there seems to be a break in the relentless heat and fall seems to be arriving finally, a little bit, as much as it can in Florida. Right now all I can do is hope for a healthy weekend that unfolds into a healthy, fresh new week.
Oh no!!! Glad you are all on the mend!! Praying y'all all stay well!!!
ReplyDeleteLindsay I am so sorry!!! That's probably one of the hardest parts of being a mom. No time for sickness! Or at last no time to lay around in the misery of your sickness. I'll say a prayer for you tonight and hope you have a good, RESTFUL, weekend!
ReplyDelete<3
Yes, you're so right! No time for sickness at ALL! :( Ethan threw up once in his crib tonight so that was disheartening...I was really hoping he was on the mend. Hoping it was a one time thing.
DeleteThank you so, so, so much, Rachel! We really appreciate it! <3
Oh Linday..I am so sorry that your darling boy had to go through that and so sorry that you caught it. It is so hard to rebuild after being so sick. Glad that you are all on the mend. xx- Monica
ReplyDeletePS - my husband under-reacts too...thank goodness he is not like me, although it drives me crazy!
Thanks so much, Monica! <3
DeleteExactly -- it drives me crazy when he under-reacts but at the same time, it kind of levels me out, haha!
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