The vomiting bug blues

Last updated: 22/01/2015 15:11 by MichelleMcDonagh to MichelleMcDonagh's Blog
Filed under: MummyBloggers
Blue Monday, which landed this year on January 19th, is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year, but surely it’s all relative.
 
For instance, if you won the Lotto that day, gave birth or got a promotion at work, you would be in pretty good form. Or if the foul plague that is the dreaded vomiting bug had finally been purged from your home and the kids were hastily dispatched back to school after the week from hell, life would have seemed pretty damned good.
 
The Bruiser brought the highly infectious virus home from school with him the previous Monday and was the first to fall. He vomited all over himself, the sofa, throws, cushions and floor. I changed him, cleaned him and the sofa, threw the soiled clothes and soft furnishings into the washing machine and made him up a little bed on the couch with a bucket, towel and kitchen roll close at hand.
 
While I was scrubbing my hands in the bathroom to prevent spreading the bug, he threw up again all over himself and the sofa. And so it began.
 
In the middle of that night, Baba woke crying. I found her lying in a pool of curdled, foul-smelling undigested brown stew vomit in her cot. It was everywhere, in her hair, down the front of her sleep suit, on the sheets, covers and bumper. She, feeling better once she had thrown up, was all excited about getting out of her cot in the middle of the night. I hosed her down, changed her, and tucked her into my bed in case she was sick again during the night.
 
I rinsed all the soiled bed clothes in the bath and left them there until morning, before falling back into bed where Baba was wide awake. It took the best part of an hour to coax her back to sleep and I had just dropped off myself when a high pitched shriek tore through the silence of the night.
 
Still half asleep, I stumbled into the next room where The Bruiser was standing beside his bed wailing, a look of horror on his deathly pale face. “Melted poo, melted pooooo,” he cried as the bodily excretions he so aptly described dripped down his legs.
 
“Oh sh*t,” I cried. On the top bunk, Princess Firstborn slept soundly, blissfully unaware of the hellish scene below.
 
And so it continued for the rest of that interminable night and week. I cleaned up the mess of The Bruiser and his bed and settled him into the spare room with Manchild. A half an hour later, Baba started to retch and continued to do so on and off until lunchtime the next day when I brought her to the GP who assured me she “was through the worst of it”.
 
By Wednesday, Princess Firstborn had been infected with the dastardly bug although she seemed back to herself again the following day.
 
By Thursday, the vomiting had finally stopped, but the ‘melted poo’ was still in full flow and my childminder was struck down. Apart from being lethargic and still off their food, Baba and The Bruiser seemed to be on the mend. Then that evening, within a half hour of each other, they both started to vomit again.
 
I wanted to cry but didn’t have time in between mopping up vomit, scrubbing and bleaching toilets and floors, trying to cope with the mountain of laundry and soothe my cranky, feverish little patients. Finally by Saturday, the worst of the storm had passed and I managed to escape from our small hospital to do some grocery shopping.
 
I returned home to find that my worst nightmare had been realized: Manchild had been infected.  “I’ve never felt this bad in my life,” he moaned. (He says the same thing every time he’s sick).
 
I wanted to run back out the front door screaming. Give me ten sick kids before one sick man any day of the week. My life had turned into a Stephen King freak show.
 
Thankfully, everybody is better now and all poo has resumed solid form. The Bruiser lost so much weight he looks like a lollipop, but he’s eating for two this week to make up for it. Manchild thinks he lost half a stone in two days and there’s a little part of me that kind of wishes I would catch the bug now because I did so much comfort eating at night after all my patients went to bed that I could do losing half a stone myself.
 
It wouldn’t be the most pleasant way to shed the pounds, but it sure as hell would be the quickest.
 
Déanta in Éirinn - Sheology
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