The Trouble With Being Sick...

...is that Mom's don't get sick days. Oh, what I would have paid to have a sick day last week. Our entire family had a yucky few days, but we survived what we believe to be food poisioning. The following account might be a little too much info for some of you. I'll try to spare you the really bad details...

It started very early Wednesday morning when Lauren greeted me with puke on my pajamas at 4:30am. She threw up again about an hour later, but since she was eating and still acting otherwise normally, I chalked it up to just an upset tummy. We took Mason to school as usual and she did fine, but shortly after we got home, things really got fun. She couldn't move, nor could I even move her myself without her throwing up. We sat on the couch together for several hours with a bucket and towel at the ready.

She was much better in the evening, even scarfed down some homemade pizza, which I was reluctantly but slowly allowed her to have since she seemed to be almost back to normal. She was obviously starving after emptying her stomach several times and not having eaten anything all day. That was a mistake - all that dinner came right back up. Thankfully, she went to bed pretty easily and slept without incident that night.

The next morning, she was definitely much better, but had a bit of a relapse in the afternoon. She only threw up once but things started shifting to coming out the other end. That is a little easier to deal with though, and I was happy that we had drastically cut down the number of times we had to change our clothes, clean up a mess, and run the washing machine.

That evening, Dave ended up having to work late, and not having anything to eat for dinner, nor the energy to cook after the last couple of messy days with Lauren, I settled on having sandwich meat, cheese, and crackers for dinner. Mason, and I ate this while Lauren just had yogurt which I felt would be better for her stomach. Dave ate some when he got home later that evening.

I got Lauren down to sleep early and by the time I was getting Mason in bed around 7:30, my stomach started feeling very upset. Dave came home around this time and finished up with Mason while I went to lie on the couch. I figured I must have picked up whatever stomach bug Lauren had, and it would be no wonder with all the puke I've had on the the past couple of days. It wasn't long before I was in the bathroom myself.

So I went to bed and slept for maybe two hours before I was up again. And then again. Around 11:30 as I was lying there wishing I could take out my stomach and put in a new one, I heard Mason choking in his room. Great - he's sick now too. I made it just in time to help him to the bathroom.

Dave heard the commotion and came to help and didn't last long before he had to rush off to the other bathroom himself. Great - he's sick now too.

And so it went the rest of the night. Dave stayed with Mason in his full bed and they both were up and down every half hour or so. I stayed in our room, but got up to help as best I could - especially when Dave was in the bathroom. There were a couple of times that all three of us were sick at the same time and I was thankful Mason was able to use his bucket on his own.

As I sat there in bed or on my stool in the bathroom, I realized that it couldn't be a coincidence we were all sick with some bug within hours of each other like this. And not so severely either. We had no other symptoms except the stomach issue. Even Lauren hadn't had any fever or runny nose, or cough, or anything. I figured it must be food poisioning, so I thought back to what we ate. Since for dinner we had the meat, cheese, and crackers it would probably be one of those. We'd eaten the crackers before with no problem, we each had different meats, so that wasn't it, but we all had the same cheese. Then come to think of it, the night before Lauren got sick, she was the only one who had that same cheese. That had to be it.

I hadn't gotten any more sleep when Lauren was up for the first time around 4:30. She was up again around 5:15 so I brought her in the bed with me and put on some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while I dozed off and on. She seemed sleepy again after a couple of episodes, and I thankfully got her back to sleep again until around 7:15.

The rest of our Friday was spent with all 4 of us lying around in the living room and watching TV all day. I thankfully managed to stay out of the bathroom, but Dave and Mason were still pretty ill. All three of us were week all day. Poor Lauren, who was almost back to normal except for the messy diapers, didn't have anyone to play with, but I was so thankful she was able to entertain herself for the most part.

Dave and I slowly got better by the end of the day. Mason took a little longer and, like Lauren, switched to having everything come out the other end. But we made it through the weekend. Mason had a little relapse Sunday evening so I was thankful Monday was a school holiday and he's be staying home to continue to recover. Since today all seems well, he went to school and I'm very happy thing seem to be getting back to normal.

I cannot count the number of loads of laundry I've done over the past few days, there are several new stains in our old carpet, and the house still smells a little funky, but at least it's over now. That night was probably the second worst night of my life. (The first being a 2am visit to the ER with what turned out to be a kidney stone while 12 weeks pregnant. Having two natural childbirths wasn't even as bad - but those were both in the daytime anyway.)

And by the way, I'm reporting our fun little incident to the cheese manufacturer, the store we purchased it from, and the FDA. It really sucks to have something like this happen and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I hope we can prevent it from happening to someone else.