Chronicles of Sickia

At the end of the most perfect MLK's day (spent mostly at the zoo with the kids), we celebrated by going to our favorite Mexican restaurant. Danny got fish tacos, and I got pulled pork tacos. We switched, since neither of us was very happy with what we got. That should have been the first sign; the restaurant had never been known to fail previously.

On the way home, I was like, "I really want to stop by and see my friend's newborn!" She had just had a baby a few days earlier. So we did, and the baby was insanely cute.

We got home, and to my surprise, instead of wanting to watch a movie, all I wanted to do was lay down in bed, or make myself throw up. My stomach was in agony. Danny didn't want me to induce vomiting (the whole idea to him is strange - I guess I'm a weirdo in that I can make myself throw up at will without inserting long things down my throat), so I didn't. After several hours, I did start throwing up. And continued to every hour. For the next six or seven hours. It was terrible. Oh yeah, and I had a fever.

I thought it was because of the fish tacos. Food poisoning.

The next day, Danny stayed home and took care of me. He went out and got me some 7 up. He watched the kids so I could just sleep, facebook, and watch movies. I was able to eat about a spoonful of rice and a cracker in addition to several cups of 7 up, but that's it for the whole day.

So on Wednesday, Danny went to work. I stayed home with our kids and everything seemed to be fine, except I was dying for a nap. Jane, who was her normal, active, into-everything toddler self, would not have any of that. So I called my neighbor and asked her to watch Jane for about an hour so I could nap. I went over to pick her up, and we got into an interesting conversation.

In the middle of which, my 5 month old baby starts projectile vomiting all over the place.

When I got home, I called the doctor and they were worried he would get dehydrated. So they said to give him 5 mls of pedialyte (basically gatorade for babies) every 10 minutes, and watch him to see if he pees. If after 6 hours he doesn't pee, we needed to take him to the ER.

This was about when I realized it was not a food poisoning issue, but a nasty stomach flu. I called my friend with the newborn to tell her, even though I'm not exactly sure why - was mainly to warn her or to beg her forgiveness for possibly spreading a disease to her sweet, tiny, vulnerable baby? I don't know. In the middle of this phone message, I started to cry. And I couldn't stop. I was so freaked out.

Baby Dan was completely comatose. He was limp. His eyes wouldn't shut or open all the way. He was pale. He kept on puking. It was terrifying. He didn't pee. Danny decided that I should not take him to the ER since I was sick myself, and shouldn't spread the disease (this second day was Montezuma's Revenge aka faucet-butt). But I was terrified and wanted to be with him as long as possible. So after our other neighbor came by and helped give Dan a priesthood blessing, I drove them to the ER.

It took them over an hour to get admitted. Danny called often to let me know what was going on, but I was still a nervous wreck.

Jane went to bed. I was still a nervous wreck.

My friend with the newborn called and basically was a lifesaver. She assured me it was okay, we didn't know I was sick when we came to visit, and if something happened to them, they would just deal with it. She listened to me worry about Dan. She figured out that I needed a breastpump and a priesthood blessing, so she sent her husband over with our other neighbor, the one who came to help Danny give the baby a blessing. She saved the day.

Danny kept giving me updates. He wouldn't take the anti-nausea medicine. He was on an IV. Etc, etc. Danny said to go to bed and try to sleep. It was about 11:00.

I tried, really, but it was impossible. I kept worrying about what would happen in the worst case scenario, which led to me sobbing in hysterics. It was terrible.

I must have dozed off because Danny woke me up when he called to say he was coming home. The other thing our friends did when they came to give me a blessing was offer to drive Danny home from the hospital. It was basically the stupidest thing I ever did, drive them there. We owe our neighbors in a big way. He picked up Danny and Dan at 2 am to bring them home.

Dan was okay, and I fed him about every 2 hours for the rest of the night.

The NEXT day, yesterday, when Jane woke up, I went to go get her and discovered vomit covering her jammies, sheets, blanket, and pillow. It smalled terrible, and had dried. She must have barfed in the middle of the night and gone back to sleep in it. Ughhhh. So I gave her a bath.

Danny started to feel queasy so he stayed home. We watched Cake Boss, Mythbusters, 17 Kids and Counting, and Kipper the Dog literally all day while the kids drank tons of pedialyte. Jane was happy most of the day. She took 2 abnormally long naps, but didn't throw up again.

Keep in mind, this was the first day that I could actually start eating small portions of normal food.

Our awesome RS president called to see what we needed, and got us more pedialyte, sprite, and bread. It was so nice. I eventually went out later to get some ramen noodles and other bland and instant type foods. Oh yeah, and a new crib mattress for Dan, since we stupidly had never bothered putting a plastic cover on his, and while normally we would just air it out, yesterday was freezing cold and rainy. So....

Then Dan started puking again. So we started pumping him with pedialyte again. And he wouldn't pee, again. But this time, he wasn't pale and lethargic, just very diarrhea-ey. But unless he peed by 9:00 pm, we would have to take him to the ER. Again.

It was evening. Danny felt terrible and nauseous. Jane wanted attention. I felt extremely worried about Dan. I was just pumping him full of pedialyte, seemingly nonstop, for three hours. It sucked. Jane went to bed. Danny went to bed, even though he wanted to help; he was feeling awful and couldn't.

Every 15 minutes or so, I would take his diaper off and weigh it on our kitchen scale. It was the only way to see if he had peed. He kept on diarrheaing, puking, spit-uping (which is very hard to tell the difference, by the way), but no pee. I tried having him sit on my lap with no diaper, hoping he would pee on me. I got pooped on instead.

Finally, at 8:55, I weighed his diaper and it was 1 5/8 oz, with no poo!!!! Hooray!!!

Then, the nurse had said I would need to breastfeed him every 30 minutes for the next 4 hours. So I did, which meant getting up every half hour until 1 am, which doesn't seem that bad, except when it's after a day where you are the only one even close to being wholly healthy and you've been working nonstop to help nurse your family back to health, it was a huge challenge.

After that, she said I could nurse him normally. I woke him up at 6 am because "normally" he would have done that. The great news is he is eating fine, is happy, pink, alert, and NOT dehydrated.

Danny, who never asks me to get him anything, asked me to get him some toast in bed. He HATES eating in bed. Uh oh...let's see what happens today...

The main thing I learned from this experience so far was that I was complete idiot for thinking, "It wouldn't suck so bad if you had two children and one of them died as it would if you only had one." That's probably the dumbest thought I've had in my life. Even though we were never even close to losing Dan, I was worried sick about what-if...and I realized the truth is that losing a child would be the worst thing I can imagine happening regardless of how many I have.