Being Sick

I'm going to try and steer clear of providing too much information, but for those of you with delicate constitutions, you might want to skip this post.

The synopsis, if you are wonder why you should, is that I was violently ill yesterday.



Now, for the brave readers that are still with me, I'll give a little recap of the crazy day that happened on Friday.

Actually, I need to start on Thursday for this to make sense. On Thursday, I went out to lunch with my manager to a Thai restaurant across the street from our office. Then, that night, with Hannah and Phil and Mia, we had Blue Ribbon BBQ -- of which I ate too much but it was so good.

On Friday I woke up and went to work. Nothing crazy yet. But after about an hour I was belching, a lot, and it was bothering me. Figuring it was something that I'd had for breakfast, I tried to drink plenty of water to wash it out and get the taste out of my mouth.

About Noon, I decided that I should eat my PBJ sandwich to further push out anything that was making me gassy. Unfortunately, about an hour later, I started feeling even worse. So I left about 10 minutes early so I could lie down when I got home before Mia went to work.

After Ethan woke up, I was still not feeling well, except now it was starting to actually hurt my stomach. Mia called, I told her that I still wasn't feeling well and was just lying on the air mattress in the living room (where Hannah had slept). She recommended that I call our neighbor, Beth, to come down and watch Ethan while I tried laying down on the bed. I said that if I got worse, I would call her.

About 10 minutes later Beth came down. Mia had called her, knowing I probably wouldn't, and she played with Ethan while I went into the bedroom. By this time, I had towels and a big bowl with me.
Good thing too, after lying in bed for a while, my stomach getting more and more painful, I had my first round of violent illness. I took it out to the bathroom, figuring Ethan would see me and I'd have to stay out with him. Fortunately, he was in his room and I got to go back into my room and lie down again.

At 6:00pm, Tyler came home and he and Beth were headed out on a date. As a sidenote, Tyler brought up that maybe they could put Maggie down and bring me the monitor. Beth didn't even wait for me to answer and just shot that idea right down :)

Now, during all this time, Phil and Hannah were trying to get home from the Aquarium. They called to see if I could pick them up at Riverside station (they called before my first incident) but I asked if they would just take the commuter rail to Waltham and walk the street to our house.
Turns out, they caught the express train to Acton (Waltham is in the lower right corner). Fortunately, Linda was also on her way into town and picked them up.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch. Ethan and I were on our second back-to-back viewing of "Superheroes" aka The Incredibles. This mostly consisted of me lying (again) on the air mattress while he sat on the couch. By this time, I had started in with the moaning when my stomach hurt. After about an hour of that, I once again became violently ill. I hit the pot that I had just in front of me, the air mattress being the perfect height, then crawled into the kitchen to finish. This was messier and not all of it hit the pot. As I was laying down the paper towels, Linda and the crew showed up.

Now, from here on out the details are a bit sketchier because once I had someone to help take care of Ethan, I started zoning out. I was also in pain which might have had something to do with it.

Linda jumped right in cleaning things up and getting me some ice and medicine. I don't know what I would have done if she hadn't come out. Thank you Linda.

I know that she and Phil did a great job getting Ethan some dinner, getting his pajamas on, and reading books with him. I went in to sit with him for a few minutes after that but had to run out for a false alarm. With Ethan in bed, it was back to the air mattress for me.

After my third and final incident, lots of things happened... I think this order is correct.

First, I had two members of the ward come over and give me a blessing. That helped. Then, Mia came home early from work. That helped. I know that I mumbled things, and was kind of hard to decipher. I think that I said some things that would be embarrassing if I was more coherent. David and Luke, from the ward, helped me into the chair in our office. I was going to try sleeping there but couldn't get comfortable. And, somewhere in there, I remember bits of the Legend of Zorro on TV.

Mia called our Doctor's office for the doctor on-call. She asked if I should come into the hospital. By this time we were pretty sure that I had food poisoning and not a virus that has been going around. The doctor talked to me, though I don't think that she enjoyed trying to make out what I was saying. Then, she decided that I didn't need to come in, but she would fax in a prescription for some suppositories that I could use if I couldn't fall asleep.

I want to pause for a moment here for an observation. The entire time that I was mumbling and moaning, I could think pretty clearly. I knew what I wanted to say but I had no desire to articulate it. When I went to speak, my body just decided that it wasn't worth the effort and mumbled something. This was very frustrating, but is something that I have experienced before when I got strep throat on my 21 birthday on my mission. That was miserable too.

Back to the narrative, I was able to fall asleep without using any drugs. Which was a miracle as my stomach was stilling sending out waves of pain. I didn't sleep very well though. I woke up about every two hours and Mia would help me focus on our white noise maker instead of the pain. Then about 3am, I went out to get some ice chips because my mouth was totally dry. And at 5am, I cracked open a thing of Jello because I was starving.

This story is bleeding into today (Saturday) so I'll quickly finish it up. Mia took Ethan to a Nursery activity at the church and I slept again from 9:30am to Noon. Finally, after that I felt much better. I had a plain baked potato for lunch, some Gatorade to help re-hydrate me, and some mashed potatoes and peas for dinner. I haven't eaten much but I haven't felt like eating much either.

Now, it's about 8:30pm and I'm ready to go to bed.

But, before I crash, I just want to give thanks to everyone who helped me through this. I know that I'm a stubborn patient but you all were great.