Sick Day

It’s Friday morning, 2:30 a.m. Will is crying. Hard. I drag my groggy ass into his bedroom and smell something nasty. I shrug it off and pin it on the bag of diapers that I just took out of the diaper pail but hadn’t taken out to the dumpster yet. Then I reached into his crib to pick him up and…

Puke. Everywhere.

Will threw up all over the crib. And the sheets. Not to mention all over himself to boot. It looked like a crime scene. And if we learned anything from the time I stepped in Will’s crap, it’s that I don’t fare well when exposed to bodily fluids. So I did what any good dad would do: I put my screaming child back down in his vomit covered crib and woke my wife up.

I wasn’t a total ass. I stripped him down and gave him a bath while MJ removed all his bedding and cleaned up the crib. But unfortunately he wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.

He proceeded to upchuck every 45 minutes for the next 5 hours. And did I mention he was in our bed because we were concerned about him? That meant having a plethora of towels at the ready, all draped around him to catch any splatter. The poor guy would fall asleep for short stints, but even though I tried to catch some shuteye it was not to be. Because every time he moved or coughed, I shot up like a rocket and reached for the towel while simultaneously swinging my feet over the side of the bed to escape the potential projectile vomit. One time I jerked up so suddenly I wrenched my back.

After a few hours he had nothing left to throw up, and he was just dry heaving. It broke my heart. So I called in sick to work to stay home with him, and he improved. Or so I thought.

When he hadn’t thrown up for 6 hours I gave him a little yogurt and some milk, because he was begging for it. And he kept it down…for an hour. At 3:30 p.m. I was sitting next to him on the couch and I heard an all-too-familiar grumbling sound, that quickly turned to a wet sounding hack. Like lightning I reached for the towel and got it up to his mouth just in time for him to expel a steady stream of half-digested yogurt and milk. Except it was so fluid it just ran down the towel like a kid going down a water slide. It went on the couch, it went on Will and it got on me.

My poor son sat there, face contorted in agony, looking at me for comfort. So I did what I always do when someone close to me gets sick.

I threw up in my mouth.

Will had a few more aftershocks as I ran to the sink and tried not to lose my lunch right there on the living room floor. I cleaned up the couch, Will and myself but not before nearly puking a second time. Will didn’t throw up again, but instead it started coming out the other end. He traded projectile vomiting for explosive diarrhea. I’m not kidding either, you could hear him exploding from across the room. Since then he’s improved steadily on a diet of water, Pedialyte and Kix.

I, however, and still very much scarred.