Worst. Night. Ever.

Wednesday, 28 June 2017

If you are squeamish, don’t read on.  In fact, it’s probably best not to read on anyway.. it’s not pretty.

Monday started out normally. The kids went to school, Jon went to work, and I lazed around before heading out for an adventure hike (as per previous blog post).  

When Jon arrived home at around 6.30 he immediately mentioned being both cold & exhausted. As he cooked some chicken for the kids (I can’t bear to touch raw chicken) he expressed concern at the possible lateness of our own dinner (as I’d only just started making the pesto pasta) -  he claimed he was pretty hungry and his stomach was doing flip-flops.  

So it was pretty strange that about ten minutes later he suddenly headed off to bed for a mini-nap.  That’s weird for someone who’s hungry I thought to myself, then just a few minutes later I started to feel a bit nauseous. Not too bad, but just a little bit.   I pressed on with dinner preparations however by the time it was ready,  Jon revealed he was staying in bed for now.  Hmm..   I wasn’t feeling great either but I’d hardly eaten anything all day, so I forced myself a small bowl of pasta, and since that was delicious, I had a little bit more.

An hour later, Jon was still in bed, and I was feeling worse. The kids were busy bashing balloons from Rob’s party all over the living room and I was lying on a beanbag with a hand over my eyes in the middle of it.  Zali suggested to me that I wasn’t looking too good and I should maybe go to bed so I took her advice.  Jett was also feeling a bit tired too so he went just before I did.  Zali tidied up the worst of the mess in the kitchen before heading off to bed herself. It if wasn’t for that, Pinto would have had the Best. Night. Ever.

Half an hour later Jon and I found ourselves as involuntary entrants in a synchronised spewing   competition (thank god for that 2nd toilet we didn’t used to have!).  Had we discovered our scores I think we would have fared well in both the volume and voracity departments, but perhaps lost points for presentation, as after a few minutes we were both looking pretty shady.  

A few hours and billion trips to the bathroom later, Jett joined the spew party himself in the most dramatic of fashions involving his bed, the wall, his new carpet, and pretty much the full length of the corridor.   Thankfully Jon was able to take care of most of that cleanup (in between his own spews) - I only helped out a bit at the end when I got up for my own purposes. Ugg.

As Jett had fouled his room we put another mattress in our room and all hunkered down together, trapsing in and out to the bathroom as required through the night.   It was gross. Really gross. Really really really gross.  Zali (who was miraculously unaffected) claimed it was pretty bad for her too as she’d be just drifting off to sleep then she’d hear someone walking down the corridor followed by the unmistakable sound of expungment, which we all agree is a pretty horrible noise particularly when echoed through the house in the small hours of the night.

Thankfully my last spew was at 4am  so although my stomach still wasn’t completely better (and still isn’t)  I had a few hours of reasonable sleep before waking up in time to realise Zali was going to miss her bus for school. We quickly agreed that she should skip school anyway as she was so likely to catch the bug and it came on so fast we wouldn’t be able to save her.  Funnily enough she ended up sleeping in even longer than the rest of us that morning. Teenagers!

Dr Google has since diagnosed our illness as Norovirus, and we both had the complete set of symptoms, that being:

Illness often begins suddenly and symptoms usually last 1 or 2 days. However, during that brief period people can feel very ill and vomit, often violently and without warning, many times a day.

Common symptoms include:

• nausea
• vomiting
• diarrhoea
• abdominal cramps.

By about 10am I had the energy to have a shower and wash the vomit out of my hair (look I said it was going to be gross and you chose to read this),  and by the afternoon we were all able to start drinking small amounts of liquid, which was a big relief as I was desperately thirsty and Jett and I both had dehydration headaches.   

I pretty much spent the entire day in bed, Jett and Zali binge watched Brooklyn 99 on Netflix while Jon had to drag himself off to town to take his car in for a compulsory end of year service, which can’t have been much fun but he managed it and had time to catch a few episodes and have an afternoon snooze.

It’s Wednesday today and after another quiet day spent mostly at home (except for Zali who was sent off to school), we’re all feeling better.  Everyone will be back to school and work tomorrow and I’m never eating pesto pasta again.