Is having a sick spouse. Especially when your spouse is the kind of guy my husband is, the one who purports to be “strong” and “never gets sick” and “doesn’t need any stinkin’ medicine”, one who the second the bug hits is felled like a giant oak tree and just turns into a whiny 2 year old. For the record, I already have a genuine whiny 2 year old, so having this large scale version is not in any way a pleasant oddity in my life.
It started, as far as I can surmise, at the El Pollo Loco on Saturday. The one good thing about being on a diet, I did not partake in any of it. My 2 year old had a quesadilla, the baby had a bottle, and my husband had a chicken burrito (of doom). One day later, he was complaining of nausea. One hour after he went to bed, I was awakened by the ungodly yowls of said Chicken Burrito of Doom making its way upstream from my husband’s pylorus back to his esophagus, and making a break for freedom.
I felt bad for him today, as we debated whether it was a stomach virus or food poisoning. I decided it was food poisoning. I don’t know why I decided this, but the fact that I cannot bear the idea of me and the two kids coming down with the same virus in a few days plays a large role in my suspicion. It is food poisoning because it HAS to be food poisoning.
So I left him moaning in the bedroom while the rest of us went about our day. A few minutes into breakfast, the phone rings. It’s his cell phone. Yep, he called me from upstairs because in his weakened state he lacked the energy to just call downstairs for some ginger ale. Obligingly, I brought it (after all, this may be me in a few days. But it won’t, because it’s food poisoning, right?) This was amusing for a while, but by the fifth call, I was getting annoyed. Toilet paper, water, 7 up, Saltines, all making the march upstairs.
When I gave him some Pepto, he looked at me and told me he didn’t need medicine (this after another vomiting bout that I could hear from the other end of the house.) He said he had never had Pepto in his life, which is a weird and unusual factoid. I thought every kid born in the 70s has had Pepto at least once in their life. He seemed shocked and pleasantly surprised that a medication existed that might help with his distressing GI symptomatology. So he took it, and the blessed phone calls have slowed down.
I hope he’s better by tomorrow, because tending to him was exhausting. And I need to save my energy in case my turn is coming up, which it’s not, since I didn’t get food poisoning. But if on the off chance it does, and he continues with his planned business trip later in the week while I am home puking my guts out, and the kids are puking their guts out, his phone will be ringing too. And like him, I won’t stop calling until his butt is at my side with some ginger ale and a liter bottle of Pepto.
Jesvet
Believe it or not… I too have never had Pepto. (The generally accepted substitute from my neck of the woods growing up was Vernors ginger ale.)
My hub is the same way. The world stops when he’s sick. Ai yi yi!