Erin– In horror movies, the music rises, the lighting changes, and you know that evil and untoward things are coming. Our story is not like that. No warning, no ominous downbeat, but this foul thing landed in our household and when it unleashed its unholy wrath, we were defenseless. Skewing this a bit towards the melodramatic, you say? Well, buckle up. It’s a bumpy ride.
Looking back on our innocence on Friday, I actually tear up a little. At 3pm, young Eddie, who is only 4 and not yet the master of the graceful upchuck, booted all over the bathroom. Not a big deal. Five kids. Spit and the other thing happen—a lot.
Eddie proceeded to spew like a geyser for the NEXT SIX HOURS. I was considering getting him an X-ray to make sure he doesn’t have 4 stomachs like a cow.
Ellen– Good lord, woman, are you drinking enough fluids? Delirium is setting in.
Erin– Anyway, I washed my sick puppy, put him to bed, and cloroxed the bathroom. Crisis over. Oh, silly Erin, had I not learned how quickly things can go from kinda-bad to serious-sh%#-going-down to flat-out-apocalyptic mayhem?
Ellen – Can you say Pollyanna? Erin has 5 kids. This is not her first turn down Dysentery Drive. Let’s ask her brother-in-law whose family they nearly killed 2 years ago with The Great Pittsburgh Easter Virus. I’m pretty sure he is still holding a grudge for turning the family celebration into a CDC point source investigation.
Erin– Anyway, I might have heard that the preschool had a class-A-bigtime-stinky-virus, but that wasn’t what we had. A Sisterhood Secret is not to put much stock in rumors. I felt free to dispatch two of the boys to overnight sleepovers the next day. Umm, yeah, you can see where this is going. We were now THAT family.
Ellen– Yes, Erin sent biological bombs into not one, but TWO, separate sleepovers. What is that scratching noise you hear? That is Erin’s name being added to the top of every Black List in the county.
Erin– The phone calls started at 10pm. Kids were dropping like flies, and I was working hard to keep up, but at 12am, Mom was down too. I have almost zero recollection of the next few hours as our viral marauders had their way with me. Aliens could have landed, I dunno. . . Anyway, as I was completely sacked out on the couch or taking up residence in the bathroom, I had no time to think about how much worse this could get.
But apparently, it could get a lot worse. Steve took Ace to his soccer game, but exclaimed as Ace(14) opened the door, “You are going to have to find your own way home, because the plague is taking me down. Starting now.”
Ellen– Steve is not that kind of parent. This just shows how awful this thing was. And are you keeping score? Erin has just spread this crud to a whole new pool of victims.
Erin– I can only imagine what the parents who gave my child a ride home thought of us. But I was beyond caring. Being wrapped around a toilet does that to a woman.
And now Steve was out too. We were Night of the Walking Dead, except that the best we could do was kind of groan and crawl. The healthy were forced into medic duty with full exposure to The Menace. Good times.
And have I fully conveyed the virulence of this thing? By dawn, the Evil Viral Menace had claimed Biddie(13). I was a desperate woman now, begging for people to acknowledge my pain and suffering. I posted a pathetically transparent plea for sympathy on Facebook. People stroked my fragile ego and made me feel a little better, except for my brother-in-law. He did bring up the Easter thing.
Ellen– I told you there was a grudge. But she didn’t get to wallow in her little Facebook pity party for long.
Erin– Ace wanders over and says he STILL has a headache and blurry vision. Still? Huh? He wasn’t sick yet. I shook my head a little as if that would settle the information more coherently in my brain.
Ellen– Yes, Ace, with the unrefined information filter of a teenage boy, decided not to tell his parents that he got knocked in the head during the soccer game. He didn’t want to bother the sick parents. Kinda sweet.
Erin– So phone call to Ellen.
Ellen– Yes, it sounded like he had a concussion, but they were way too sick to go to the ER.
Erin– Yeah, the ER might have done us in. Our immunocompromised selves would either be further assaulted or end up killing some poor sick little old lady–not the best way to redeem our reputation as the Point Source for this mess in my hometown.
As the proud patient of the World’s Greatest Doctor, I was able to secure a private assessment of Ace’s concussion away from the ER with the caveat that we must wear masks so as not to infect the office. And we had to come in the back door. We were one step away from being quarantined.
Good news: concussion was mild and Ace was not in danger.
Bad news: two hours later, Ace fell victim to The Menace, too. That’s right, folks! 7/7. Seven in one nasty, viral blow!!
In my weakened state, I almost violated my tenant that motherhood is not a pissing contest. I nearly snarkasticly replied to my friend Nicole’s Facebook post: “And we are 5/5 with the stomach virus. Yay! We’re so nerdy that we even have to get 100 percent when it comes to illness percentages!” I was feeling a little competitive. What is 5/5 compared to 7/7? I refrained from posting, but perhaps mentioning her post here is equally snarkastic and competitive.
Ellen– Especially when you kind of stole her idea for the 7/7. And by the way, MY family was sick, too, albeit it with a much more civilized virus. No love coming my way. Just sayin’.
Erin– Perhaps both of you will take pity on me as the Viral Menace has beaten me down and blurred the lines of decency for me. I mean Nicole even sounded downright chipper in her post. I am not chipper. I am not happy. Clearly we had a different strain at our house.
This thing crushed even my inner Pollyanna. Perhaps some musical cue or lighting shift could have signaled to me that the darkness was about to descend. It would have given me time to invest in Saltines and Seagram’s Ginger Ale. Or, at the very least, to hang a crucifix in the window or some garlic on the hearth.
Ellen– Erin’s birthday is coming up and I’m getting her a whole house fumigation. What’s that? A call just came in from the Health Department. They are honoring me with a medal for community service.
Want to read what came before? Check out Part I and Part II.
Noteworthy: Erin started this blog while still fighting the virus and Ellen did final edit while in the pediatrician’s office with her youngest. We’re hardcore like that.
