Bugs in Our Bodies?!

I have always been a bit freaked out by the idea of the flu "bug" or stomach "bug" working its way through my body. It's just plain disgusting to think about.

Monday is when it all began, or so I thought. Dante had a messier than usual diaper, then Micah did, then Dante again. I told Jamie it looks like we have a bug. If only it had been that simple.

Around midnight Monday night we woke up to the sound of Amelia vomiting at the top of the stairs. We brought her down, cleaned her up, and she spend the next five hours heaving off and on. The poor little girl was just miserable. She asked for orange juice around 8am, which one of her brothers unwittingly gave to her; it came back up thirty minutes later. Thankfully that was it and she spent the rest of the day sleeping, taking sips of water in her lucid moments. By evening she was asking for some of the white rice we were having with dinner.

No one else fell ill, although I warned the kids someone else was bound to get sick. I figured at least Micah and Dante had only had diarrhea. Wednesday was looking pretty good, just a few of us feeling a tad queasy. Unfortunately it got much worse. I had to run Nik out for foot x-rays, and when we got back Zachary had taken to bed, and Nikita and I followed shortly after. Poor Jamie, when he got home from work at 3 he found Nik and I hugging our pots and within half an hour Micah and Sunny started. Dante was next, and by 9pm there were 7 of us emptying our stomachs, even though they already felt empty.

Nurse Amelia of course was perfectly fine by then, and would run to whomever she heard coughing to offer a pat on the back and a "you ok?". Jamie somehow took care of Dante, Sunny, and Micah while I tried now and then to stumble out of bed to help.

Jamie wisely called in to work Thursday morning, knowing the teens and I had zero energy to care for the little ones, who were all recovering and finding their energy. It finally hit poor Jamie around 9am, and he was down for the count. (At one point Nikita said it sounds like there was a donkey dying in the bathroom, in my pregnancy induced hormonal state I found this much funnier than a good wife should have.)

So here we are on Friday morning, all better but drinking Gatorade to replenish our energy and get going again. Even Jamie was able to go to work this morning. As painful as it was for all of us, I am so thankful it was simply a 24 hour stomach bug, and not a chronic condition or disease. We are a healthy family once again, and for this I praise God.