I’m fortunate to be able to say that one of the worst things to happen to my little family was a wave of awful, but brief sickness.
Violet was just four and had been sitting on the couch when she mentioned that her stomach hurt. I asked if she needed to go potty and she shrugged. To be on the safe side I got her up and was leading her to the bathroom when she started projectile vomiting just…..everywhere. Have you ever seen someone casually walking and gushing vomit at the same time? It is completely disturbing.
She probably hadn’t thrown up since she was an infant and had no idea what just happened, but was pretty relaxed considering the horror she’d just released. She would later refer to this act as being “mouth sick” because these adorable little plague boxes say the darndest things!
Mark and I peeled her filth slicked pajamas off of her and threw them right in the trash. While he took her to the shower to hose her off, I washed my hands and put on rubber gloves to scrape and scrub the couch, table, floor and wall and anything else that had been hit.
Had I known then that my child had just unleashed the norovirus into my living room, I would’ve put on hazmat suit, wrapped every tainted thing in plastic and shoved it out the window. Before that, I would have at the very least covered my mouth and nose with a shirt or something while I got Violet cleaned up.
Unfortunately, I did none of that. We were focused on cleaning and comforting, not knowing how screwed we were to be exactly eleven hours later.
To be fair, the only experience I’d had as an adult with this virus came from people claiming they had it, when actually they just hadn’t accepted responsibility for their problem drinking. Yes, it must’ve been a stomach bug or food poisoning that kept you vomiting most of they day, not the bottle of wine and 14 shots of whiskey you had at the bar last night, ya big drunk dummy.
In less than a day, this virus had taken all of us down. I could not even stand up without vomiting. This lasted for hours and hours. Mark was just as bad and at some point, I think we were crawling passed each other on the way to and from the bathroom. Did I mention that Lillian was only three months old at the time and I that was breastfeeding? Or that it was my birthday?
As I said- it was awful. But live and learn! From then on, whenever anyone comes down with any sickness I go into Quarantine Mode.
So last Friday when my child went suddenly, visibly ill- I prepared for the worst.
She went from being fine, to starting to cough a little. Then a little more. I had been looking for a band aid to put on an unrelated tiny scratch on her arm and and when I looked over she was gone.
She had fled to the bathroom and somewhere in the 15 feet it took to get there, all of the color had just fallen out of her. Her face and lips were grey and as I watched, beads of sweat were forming on her forehead. When I touched her she was startlingly cool. She was leaving little moisture hand prints where she was gripping the side of the bathtub while kneeling by the toilet because she thought she was going to be sick.
I was rubbing her back and wiping her brow with a washcloth one hand and, like the professional that I am, trying to violently shove the rug and anything else near her as far away as I could with the other. I’d even pulled my shirt up over my nose (because never again Mouth Sick, NEVER AGAIN ).
After about ten minutes with no vomit happening, I got her to lay down in bed (with an emergency bucket nearby). She was still grey and despite her temperature being two degrees low, she said she felt hot. Dark circles had appeared under her eyes.
I had immediately thought this was going to be the Return of The Norovirus , but now I was even more worried that it was The Flu. , it’s bad this year. Frightening in fact. Deadly even.
So I transferred all of her pillows and blankets and about 17 of the stuffed animals she sleeps with, along with a pile of books, her sketch pad and the family laptop into the back bedroom and moved her there from the room she shares with her sister.
I kept Lillian entertained in another room. Occasionally, she would stand in Violet’s doorway and blow her kisses and hugs to make her feel better, which was very sweet and lessened the possibility of Violet going mad from the isolation. …though having unlimited time to play her video games and watch videos about playing video games and draw pictures of creatures she encountered in those video games ensured that she was happily distracted.
I’ve been doing everything I can to prevent this flu from getting us, and a big part of that just happens to be one of my favorite things: Avoiding People. We don’t go places we don’t need to this time of year. When I do get out I see people in public spaces like the grocery store wearing medical masks and that’s a little unnerving.
If I could, I’d whisk my family away to some lovely and remote cabin to live in forever for the duration of winter. But alas, we haven’t the fortune required to flee society.
Violet’s low temperature turned into a fever, but after a couple of days her appetite came back and the fever went away and she was back to normal. On Monday, I sent my child back into the germ pit that is third grade. Even though lately it almost goes against my instinct to protect her , I still send her to school. However, things being as they are, that may change one day.
At home, now I keep doing what I can to keep everyone alive and healthy. I keep a vat of hand sanitizer at the door, I make sure everyone eats and sleeps well. But really, there’s only so much an apple a day can do.
The rest is just luck.
And that’s a little terrifying.
