**This post is graphic and may be offen­sive to those of you with weak stom­achs**

Mon­day evening brought a stom­ach ache that I thought was due to over indulging in home made Chi­nese food. I took a Tums and went to bed after watch­ing Castle.

Around 4 AM a seri­ous abdom­i­nal grum­bling accom­pa­nied with dis­com­fort woke me. Doing what one would do in such an obvi­ous sit­u­a­tion, I returned to bed with hopes of sleep­ing until my son’s alarm went off at 6 AM.

Wrong!

The dis­com­fort was too intense for me to remain in bed. Toss­ing and turn­ing made return­ing to the land of slum­ber impos­si­ble. Rather than fight it, I got up and began my usual morn­ing rou­tine of mak­ing cof­fee, turn­ing on the news and check­ing what was new on Facebook.

By the time my junior in high school lum­bered down the stairs, full force nau­sea and other stuff had kicked in. It was imme­di­ately clear that my 9:30 AM clock in time at work would not occur. A cup of cof­fee wasted. Two sips and it was clear it was a bad choice.

Blurgh.

Fast for­ward to the present. Day three and I’m weak and woozy, but no longer pro­jec­tile vom­it­ing air. Air? Yes, air. Until last night (Wednes­day), I wasn’t able to keep any­thing in my stom­ach. After tex­ting my niece who is a nurse, she told me I had to get Gatorade or ice chips in small amounts to stay down or she’d come get me to go to the emer­gency room.

NO!!!!

It’s not that I don’t have insur­ance or a fear of doc­tors or nee­dles. It’s just that  … I have no real idea why. Pos­si­bly the loom­ing debt that would come with an ER visit regard­less of insur­ance. It isn’t 100% cov­er­age, after all.

So, my son brought me a bot­tle of Gatorade — Pow­er­ade, actu­ally– I sipped and sipped until it was gone. Along with each sip I prayed and prayed that it would remain in my system.

Call it luck or the power of prayer, it stayed in my stom­ach and my headache sub­sided until 2:30 AM. I awoke aston­ished that there wasn’t dis­com­fort any­where but my back which I fig­ured was due to the effects of the intense power of throw­ing up. Seri­ously, that does a num­ber on the entire body. Plus, I’d slept away two days of my life. Another thing, because I’m a weirdo and based on curios­ity, I weighed myself Tues­day morn­ing prior to hack­ing up my guts numer­ous times (and other stuff). This morn­ing (Thurs­day), I stepped on the scale again. Ten pounds. TEN POUNDS in two days. Of course, it is not fat. Hon­estly, by the looks of my ankles, I think it all came from there. I’d been bloated and sport­ing some lovely can­kles since hav­ing not worked out much since my dancing-fool recep­tion knee injury. For what it is worth, my knee no longer hurts nor does it have lim­ited movement.

Oops, sorry. I was side tracked.

Now, let us come to the cur­rent day. It’s Thurs­day and I feel about 50%. Show­er­ing was risky.At the time I was about to get in the shower I’d texted a friend to ask that if he didn’t hear from me in 30 min­utes to call 911 because I passed out; hit my head and may be uncon­scious and dying in my tub. For­tu­nately, only a bout of dizzi­ness occurred and I held my footing.

A lit­tle before noon today my phone rang. Being nearly asleep on the couch, I con­sid­ered ignor­ing it, but some­thing told me not to. Good thing I hadn’t dis­missed the call. It was my son’s school call­ing to tell me that my child who hasn’t missed a day of school since fifth grade was com­plain­ing of feel­ing sick to his stom­ach and a headache.

Oh, no! What had I done? I infected my own child.

With­out hes­i­ta­tion I grabbed my keys and dashed to the high school. About a block from my house it dawned on me I prob­a­bly had no busi­ness dri­ving in my state, but my son needed me. Dri­ving with delib­er­a­tion that an over­tired trucker might have, I made it to and from the school with­out incident.

Within 3.5 hours of my son com­ing home, he was spew­ing into a bucket that I’d put next to the couch. The poor kid doesn’t know what to do! He doesn’t get sick. He may get a snif­fle now and then. How­ever, it is gone within a mat­ter of 24 hours. Let me repeat: HE DOES NOT GET SICK! That is until today.

I made my child sick.

If you’re a par­ent you know exactly what I mean when I say that it seems impos­si­ble to ever do enough for your kids. It’s such a help­less feel­ing that we can’t wave our magic parental hand over them and make it all bet­ter … or give a kiss on the boo boo.

My son is amaz­ing and I have never been shy about brag­ging about him. He and I have had impen­e­tra­ble immune sys­tem until recently. It makes sense, per­haps, that we’d both get sick together. Here’s what is TRULY astound­ing about my kiddo: Before he departed for the day, he picked up his assign­ments from the classes he missed today and is cur­rently doing his homework.

Go ahead and read that sen­tence again. It’s high­lighted for your view­ing pleasure.

He vio­lently threw up less than an hour ago and he is now tak­ing care of home­work. It is appar­ent that he has full inten­tions of attend­ing school tomor­row. He doesn’t even know how to play it up (as I did). Egads, how did I get so lucky?

Now, I’m going to com­mence to pray­ing that my son has expe­ri­enced the last of toss­ing his Gatorade into a garbage pail.