So, Rye has been doing well that past few days and things have been smooth sailing.
Until last night that is… Here’s how it all went down.
The evening begins with a pleasant enough dinner, some jovial family discussion, some TV watching, some computer time, etc, etc. We all go to bed at a reasonable hour, everyone is pleasantly asleep. Well actually, Don and I were dead asleep, dreaming lulling lullabies, perky sheep floating above winking at us as they pass, lovely sheets and cozy down comforters.
And then it happens…
“Mom,” Rye says. “Mom!”
“Ughh, what?” I say, hoping that if I just act as sleepy as I really am he will accept defeat and go back to sleep.
No such luck.
“Mom, I feel like I’m going to throw up,” he says.
Now, if you’re like me and you have a child with learning disabilities, ADHD, anything of this nature, you know the drill. These kids often don’t feel like going to school (and rightly so – it’s murky waters for them and anyone with an ounce of sympathy can understand their plight) – so they often feign illness to get out of it.
“Rye, go back to bed and lay down, I’m sure you’ll feel better if you just lay down,” I say.
There, that ought to do it. Now go on…walk away…back to bed…hoping…hoping…
Not happening.
“Mom, I really feel sick, I’m going to go in…”
And there it came. He took 3 steps towards our master bath and just lost it all over the place. I mean vomit was blowing everywhere. Non-stop. It was a total vom-o-rama.
“Oh my God!” I scream and jump out of bed to clean up the mess. I am fighting the sickness I feel from the smell and Don jumps out of bed and heads into the other room because he’s about to get sick from the smell as well. We are getting ready to have our own vomitorium here. It’s crazy.
Oh man, I’m thinking…where is this coming from?? I’m grabbing towels, throwing them everywhere and Rye is just going to town – painting the bathroom brown. What the heck is going on here? We were all fine 5 hours ago??
And then it dawns on me in my sleepy, murkified haze of a thought process…
Oh My God! It’s H1N1!! This must be it! They warned us about it. You see them everywhere – warnings, warnings, warnings. They say it will be terrible. They say it will kill millions – THE SWINE FLU! Aghhh…we all have The Swine Flu!! I reach back and feel…am I growing a tail?? I check my face – is there a budding snout?? They said this pandemic will sweep the globe and now it’s made way to our little town… it’s right here in River City! The plague of our century and we are going to succumb to this mad pig disease and become a CDC statistic. Oh man, this is not how I pictured it all playing out -not at all.
A few minutes pass and the commotion calms and Rye’s throwing up manages to get under control. He stops getting sick and I follow him around cleaning up and somehow manage to never actually get sick myself. We are all exhausted. We clean up, turn the alarm off and fall asleep.
The morning comes – no school today, for sure – and we wait and we wait. Are we dying yet? When will the big fever hit and stop us all in our tracks? Was that just round one?
And we wait some more…
As it turns out, none of us are sick with the flu of any kind. Rye had food poisoning from some tainted take-out macaroni & cheese he ate for dinner.
Go figure.
Well, at least managed to dodge the pandemic- for now, that is.
