My daughter gave me dysentery for Father’s Day. I guess ash trays are gauche these days, and ties are SO bourgeois.
Okay, it might not have been dysentery. It might have just been the flu. But somewhere around 8:00 last night, I was pretty sure this little Oregon Trail of life wasn’t quite making it through to Willamette.
Baby brought it home from day care, throwing up throughout the night on Thursday. Poor thing. I really sympathized with her. Sympathy, from the Greek word for “to suffer.” Even stayed home with her all day Friday.
Baby was mostly clear by Friday afternoon. Yay! We’re in the clear!
But that clearly wasn’t enough for the gods of tragedy. They had to pass it along to me and my wife with an Oedipal fury. Not Oedipal as in sleeping with our parents. More along the “gouging our eyes out” variety.
Wife and I actually caught the symptoms within an hour of each other on Saturday. Thank God for grandparents nearby. If you don’t have any of those, I suggest you grow some.
Then it was just wife and I dealing with the rigors of keeping things down. We failed miserably. It seemed like we were aligned perfectly, each bout of “Out of Both Ends” starting within minutes of each other. Thank God for multiple bathrooms.
There are a few things I’ve never quite understood about the human propensity to purge the system during sickness. I know that we occasionally have to get something harmful out of our system. I have dogs and cats, and they both vomit. But dogs and cats just vomit once and then they’re done. No histrionics, no curling up by the commode waiting for the next round. Never once seen my 17-year old cat (who vomits often) dry heave. Never seen Hershey squirts flying out of his ass.
As an evolutionary trait, how did humans come up with this particular purging mechanism? How did we survive as a species? Because I think any wolf or bear in a five-mile radius would’ve heard and smelled me last night. Any other tribe members would have done their best to steer wide from me. Leave me with a little tombstone that said “Here lies Wombat. He done shat himself to death.”
During the second half of the last night’s plague outbreak, I grew tired of dry heaving and cotton mouth and feebly stated “I’d rather be vomiting up something instead of nothing.” A statement I would not agree with an hour later, but at the time it seemed logical.
I’ve always been a fan of water. It seems an odd statement, but I know a lot of people who aren’t. Think of how many products are out there to make water more palatable. But I love the stuff. On the average day, I only drink three types of fluid – water, coffee (black), and iced tea (unsweetened). Because when I drink, I want fluid, not sugar. I’ll save my sugar intake for ice cream. Or beer (drink number four on the “non-average” days).
And that first gulp of water I had last night was exquisite. My mouth was so parched. I wanted to drink a gallon of it. I downed the first pint in one gulp. Maybe not the best idea, but it was soothing every square centimeter of my mouth, tongue, and throat. I tried to pace myself. I swished some of the second pint in my mouth instead of swallowing, then fill a third pint and put it by my bed as I tried to pass out for another hour.
And then it all came back up. More violent than before. As if my body was shaming me for attempting to, I don’t know, hydrate? Survive? Seriously, body, what the fuck is your problem?
And this is, again, when I start to question the purpose of vomiting, and especially of repeat vomiting. The symptoms when we are sick are not actually from the virus or bacteria itself, but from our body’s attempt to attack and remove those foreign agents. The flu doesn’t cause you to vomit, your body attacking the flu causes you to vomit. As a lifelong allergy sufferer, I know that no amount of logic and reason will stop my body from thinking dust is a mortal enemy.
So the first round of vomits is understandable, removing a bit of poison. Your stomach doesn’t like the last thing you ate, so get in there and remove it. And if I put something potentially damaging in afterward, it’s probably a good idea to be on guard. My body really doesn’t have the fucking time to process shit right now, what with the fighting off Montezuma’s goddamn Revenge, and all.
But water? If I had put some Crystal Light in it, I could understand. My wife tried some Sprite and on an earlier respite, I had a little ginger ale. Our bad. I deserve that sickeningly-sweet upchuck and the burned nasal hairs that come with it.
But it was just basic water. What the fuck kind of overzealous white blood cell is deciding that the building block of all life is somehow detrimental to my wellbeing? And has this little fuckwad checked in with my mouth recently? Because my mouth is definitely on board the whole “water is good” train.
I seriously question how humans are still around. How did we even get to the point where ol’ Jebediah could set out from Independence, MO, in the hopes of maybe only catching cholera this time.
Good news is I’ll have plenty of time to think about it. I feel another flux coming on.
The Writing Wombat 