*Caution. Graphic description of vomiting to follow.*
We are recovering from the stomach flu around here and I seem to have been hit the worst. Chad had been talking about how people at work were coming down with a 24-hour stomach bug and puking and what not. I think it’s what the little guy had too when he was throwing up on Saturday. Poor guy, sick, and being hauled all over LA and back. I guess he didn’t mind so much as long as he was being carried by mama, and sleeping whenever he needed.
It wasn’t until Monday on the drive to Ikea that I started to feel queasy. I remember thinking, Ah damn, this is what car sickness feels like, and empathizing with my sister-in-law who gets carsickness pretty bad. I felt okay enough to poke around Ikea though, and to help Chad polish off two different kinds of chocolate pie. It was the last thing I ate for 24 hours.
Later that day, I walked into the kitchen, smelled the homemade chicken stock bubbling on the stovetop, and I could feel the hurl building.
I quickly rolled down the blinds, so as not give the neighbors a show, was my own best girlfriend and held my hair back, and puked into the side of the sink with the garbage disposal. Good thinking, eh?
The first wave was brown – definitely the chocolate pie.
The next two hurls were white and lumpy. Could it possibly be the oatmeal from earlier that morning, I thought?
And then with no logic whatsoever, the last few pukes were plain clear water – which I had just drunk.
And although I don’t know much about the physiology of the stomach, I really did think that the entire contents of the stomach were evenly mixed. But now I have a picture in my mind of an unwell stomach with roiling layers of undigested food, heaving back and forth uneasily, waiting to be unloosed.
Normally I have an iron-clad stomach, eating ceviche off the streets of Baja and bits of banana wrapped fried things on the streets on Bangkok, so I rarely throw up. In fact, although this cannot be accurate, the last time I remember throwing up was over twenty years ago in Montreal after spending an evening with French friends around some large bowl filled with alcohol that we had lit on fire. Ironically, Chad, who has a more tender stomach stayed home yesterday with a stomachache and nothing more. Bella is going to school late this morning – and once in a while I can hear pitiful little coughs and gasps coming from her room.
Whereas I have been wracked with body ache, head ache, and belly ache for the last two days. It has subsided today. Although I can feel the heavy pressure of the headache still pressing against the back of my forehead, just begging me to do too much and let it get back inside me.
Sorry, no pictures for this post either. : )
