The Blight Before Christmas
My original plan to do a journal entry every day of my vacation quickly fell by the wayside after I got sick. Which was after I changed a diaper but before I pushed a car out of a frozen driveway but before I gave out free robots and after the suppository incident.
It was a strange vacation.
Thanks to last year's debacle, I carefully planned my route for maximum sunshine, leaving after dawn and driving only until well before dusk. I was able to make great time even against some pretty strong headwinds and, eventually, blizzards--I was in Richmond, IN by 5pm after leaving at 7:30. This year I decided to combine my usual halfway stop and visit with my old library school friend Anne in Richmond into a single thing, and as a result we were able to have not only dinner but also breakfast together. She's doing well, and planning a crazy globetrotting sabbatical.
It's a good thing I was able to see her, too, because that's the only one of the plans I made beforehand that I was able to see to fruition.
When I arrived in Fenton, Phil was away at a wedding (which I had known beforehand) but a nasty norovirus was sweeping through the household, brought by the kids from the petri dish known as daycare. It caused particularly nasty 24-hour gastroenteritis characterized by massive eruptions from both ends (as Phil put it, "two exits, no waiting;" as Vasily Albanov put it, "burning the candle at both ends"). There was a period of being unable to keep anything down, even water, vomiting until nothing but bile and blood would come up coexisting with unbearable, unspeakable diarrhea that was more like the watery vomit than any natural bowel movement.
The twins had gotten it before I arrived and passed it on to Greyson, who was sick on my arrival. The next day, he was completely better but Jill was terribly ill; with Phil on his way home it fell to me to take care of everything. I went to get suppositories (the only way to treat the symptoms if you can't keep anything down) and kept the kids entertained and fed. I even, God help me, changed the twins' pull-up learner's diapers after they failed to use the potty. I had to skip a planned meeting with my friends in Ann Arbor because there was no other adult who could take care of the household.
I also knew that it was only a matter of time before I became sick, despite taking every precaution I could and washing my hands until they were raw. Noroviruses are massively infectious and can be aerosolized; I was probably infected the second I walked in. With that in mind, I ate as much as I could the day Jill was sick and shaved and showered when Phil arrived home.
When the sickness came, though, it was far worse than anything I had prepared for.
I spent all of Christmas Eve bedridden, and my friends Kate and Karsten, who had been planning a visit with their new baby, had to cancel it. The racking vomiting was bad enough, but the lengthy periods of unbearable nausea were worse, as were the fever and chills and aches that made it impossible to get comfortable. I even, God help me, took a suppository to try and knock me out but the two exits no waiting policy overrode it. It was only near bedtime that I was able to keep water and Gatorade down, and by Christmas morning I was groggy but on the mend. Phil eventually got sick too, but he was able to stave it off with an 11-hour healing coma.
The result of all that was that I didn't get to see any of my friends except Anne, and mostly just hung around. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that without that nasty illness there would have been time for both.
It was a strange vacation.
Thanks to last year's debacle, I carefully planned my route for maximum sunshine, leaving after dawn and driving only until well before dusk. I was able to make great time even against some pretty strong headwinds and, eventually, blizzards--I was in Richmond, IN by 5pm after leaving at 7:30. This year I decided to combine my usual halfway stop and visit with my old library school friend Anne in Richmond into a single thing, and as a result we were able to have not only dinner but also breakfast together. She's doing well, and planning a crazy globetrotting sabbatical.
It's a good thing I was able to see her, too, because that's the only one of the plans I made beforehand that I was able to see to fruition.
When I arrived in Fenton, Phil was away at a wedding (which I had known beforehand) but a nasty norovirus was sweeping through the household, brought by the kids from the petri dish known as daycare. It caused particularly nasty 24-hour gastroenteritis characterized by massive eruptions from both ends (as Phil put it, "two exits, no waiting;" as Vasily Albanov put it, "burning the candle at both ends"). There was a period of being unable to keep anything down, even water, vomiting until nothing but bile and blood would come up coexisting with unbearable, unspeakable diarrhea that was more like the watery vomit than any natural bowel movement.
The twins had gotten it before I arrived and passed it on to Greyson, who was sick on my arrival. The next day, he was completely better but Jill was terribly ill; with Phil on his way home it fell to me to take care of everything. I went to get suppositories (the only way to treat the symptoms if you can't keep anything down) and kept the kids entertained and fed. I even, God help me, changed the twins' pull-up learner's diapers after they failed to use the potty. I had to skip a planned meeting with my friends in Ann Arbor because there was no other adult who could take care of the household.
I also knew that it was only a matter of time before I became sick, despite taking every precaution I could and washing my hands until they were raw. Noroviruses are massively infectious and can be aerosolized; I was probably infected the second I walked in. With that in mind, I ate as much as I could the day Jill was sick and shaved and showered when Phil arrived home.
When the sickness came, though, it was far worse than anything I had prepared for.
I spent all of Christmas Eve bedridden, and my friends Kate and Karsten, who had been planning a visit with their new baby, had to cancel it. The racking vomiting was bad enough, but the lengthy periods of unbearable nausea were worse, as were the fever and chills and aches that made it impossible to get comfortable. I even, God help me, took a suppository to try and knock me out but the two exits no waiting policy overrode it. It was only near bedtime that I was able to keep water and Gatorade down, and by Christmas morning I was groggy but on the mend. Phil eventually got sick too, but he was able to stave it off with an 11-hour healing coma.
The result of all that was that I didn't get to see any of my friends except Anne, and mostly just hung around. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that without that nasty illness there would have been time for both.