This is disgusting but also amusing, I hope

Last night I threw up, and this would not be worth noting except for the fact that I have not thrown up since 1978. It was at Hershey Park, I was nine, and, you know. Chocolate bars. Amusement park rides. There was nothing traumatic about that incident, so I'm not sure why I developed a huge fear of throwing up. Oh, but I did! (Huge. Like, cried throughout the first trimester of pregnancy because It might happen. Hyperventilated at the thought of caring for a sick child. Wept if someone threw up in a movie. Still haven't forgiven best friend for sending "funny" picture of one drunk guy puking pretzels and beer on another drunk guy. Huge.)

At some point I controlled my fear by deciding that I would simply not throw up, ever again. Just wouldn't! No matter what occurred in my digestive system, I would fight the urge until it passed.

I am as surprised as anyone that this worked so well.

My pukeophobia eased up somewhat as Henry grew up, and I saw how utterly blasé he was about the act. Once he got carsick and immediately after announced, "Wow! Throwing up is magic!" And then asked for a cookie.

This is all gross, I know. I apologize. If there are any fellow phobics out there, I am well and truly sorry. But maybe this will heal you! Read on!

Anyway, last night I was out visiting a friend, and I endured a thrill-ride cab ride home, during which I began feeling distinctly unwell. Things were not good. I don't know whether it was the takeout Indian, or the wine, or the ride, or the existential horror. Whatever it was, I had the awful realization, as I hobbled to my front door, that this quease would not pass in a few minutes. Guess what, it was saying. Still, I tried to ignore it and get ready for bed as if I were fine, la la la,  but my stomach, she demanded my attention. Events were in motion. I could have stayed up all night gritting my teeth and willing myself to continue my decades-long streak, but I gave up. Let's see if this is as all magical as Henry says it is, I thought.

Now, here's the thing. The thing is. My brand-new downstairs neighbors had entered the building right before me. I saw them walking in as I paid for the cab. They turned and saw me. Then ten minutes later I clomped up the stairs in my boots and was …  in the bathroom. The bathroom, wherein all sounds carry from apartment to apartment as clearly as if the person were standing right there next to you.

And you guys. I was SO LOUD. I was like a barfing cartoon character. I couldn't control it. I sounded like a muppet puking up major appliances. Like a tortured elephant. Like I was performing self-exorcism and Baalphegor himself had just emerged from my headholes. My husband tweeted about how I loud I was, is how loud. I'm surprised no one on my block called Animal Control.

I don't recall being this vocal when I was little. It was like the entire act was so unnatural to me that every part of my body had to get in on the action. I wasn't trying to be dramatic, but every time another wave came over me-- HEEEEEEEUUYYYOOOOOOOOOOO.

Okay, I need to relax, I thought. I'm just tense so my stomach is spasming and--

BLOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRGHARGHARGHARG.

Scott was knocking on the door, asking if he could come in. I wanted to shout GO AWAY I'M A MONSTER but I didn't have the strength. I needed to save up all my vocal stylings for the next go-round.

GLOOOOOOORPAMOPHOOOOOUL.

As awful as I felt, part of me was cracking up, picturing my poor neighbors downstairs, merrily brushing their teeth after a night out, stopping to look at each other with alarm as their probably psychotic/bulimic neighbor upstairs performed what I'm sure they assume is her nightly ritual.

YAAAAAAAAAABLBLABLAAARRRRRRF.

Have I mentioned that I have not yet met my downstairs neighbors? Yeah. How do I introduce myself now? "Hey! Hello! You might remember me from such sounds as aaaWWWWRRRROOOUUUUUK. Ha, ha! Fun. Hey, hope I didn't ruin your night with my awful. Let me tell you what I ate last night and will never eat again! Where are you going?"

Fortunately the bout was over quickly. I don't think my vocal cords could have taken much more. While I can't say it was magical like Henry promised, I was not nearly as traumatized as I imagined I would be. Still, I think I'm good for another 33 years. Now I'm wondering if I should buy the neighbors some kind of housewarming gift. Maybe a nice gift bucket of corn chowder! No?

An adventure

So I got over my cold/flu/near-death-experience last week, sort of, but I've still been feeling a little off. My ear, specifically, felt like something besides an ear. Like a wrench, or a possum. The important thing is, ear pain, ouch. And we're heading to Utah tomorrow. This morning I kept evaluating my earache. Did it hurt? Was I imagining things? Is that sore gland on my neck really sore or is it just sore from poking it?

The last time we went to Utah to visit my brother-in-law and charming family, I ended up having an anxiety attack over a sore throat that, during the flight, morphed into the Throat of Many Horrors, and we drove to an urgent care clinic while I croaked and gasped only to be told there was nothing terribly wrong, just a little cold, ha ha, whoops. So I really wanted to get this ear problem checked out before I got to Utah and embarrassed myself all over again. Not to mention, ear problems plus plane equals my eardrums exploding all over the other screaming passengers.

I don't have a doctor in the neighborhood because I've been so astonishingly healthy, I didn't really need one, unless it was to visit the waiting room and laugh at all the sick people. But thanks to the Internet I found a doctor within a block of my home--a physician whose Yelp reviews were positive and did not include the terms "murderer" or "unsanitary prodding." I called, they asked if I could come in a half-hour, and before they could hang up the phone I was there.

Highlights of my appointments are as follows:

1. The look of undisguised horror on the receptionist's face when I told her the amount of my deductible. I always feel like I'm showing someone my war wound, when I tell them how much I have to pay out of pocket. I almost told her our monthly fee, but I was afraid it would kill her. She seemed delicate.

2. The doctor asking me about my family history of cancer, which I had filled out on the form. "What kind of cancer?" he asked, and I said, "Uh, colon-rectal?" He asked, "Who had colon cancer?" My maternal grandmother, I told him. Then he said, "And who had rectal cancer?" and I realized "colon-rectal cancer" wasn't one thing, but instead of saying that I said, "Same grandmother," and he looked at me and instead of explaining myself I let out a loud, barking laugh. And he just continued to look at me.

3. The nurse repeatedly entered the room to get supplies and every time she did, the doctor would swivel around to glare at her, and she would stop and glare right back at him, and they would be frozen like that for at least two or three seconds, the two of them staring each other down, and each time I wondered if I should applaud. Or eat popcorn! It was exciting.

4. After the doctor was done investigating my ear canals, he gazed into my eyes and whispered, "We will treat you." I felt like I was supposed to fall into his arms out of sheer relief. Finally! Someone dared to get close enough to me to treat my horrible plague!

When I returned home, there was a message from the doctor, apologizing for misspelling my name on the prescription slip. Then there was another message from him on my cell phone. I checked the prescription, and I swear to you, I think he thought my name was "Alice Bundles." I pictured him with his wife that night, discussing his day. "I saw the oddest patient today. A Miss Bundles. She laughed openly about her grandmother's horrific double cancer and then failed to applaud our mini-soap opera, 'When the Door Opens.' Curious."

THEN (you're going to get my entire afternoon, so you sit back and you enjoy it) I walked to the drugstore by Henry's school so I could wait around for the prescription and eventually pick him up. It's a longish walk, since we've moved, but it's pleasant. WHEN IT IS NOT 135 DEGREES OUT. (The humidity makes it feel like 543.) Also, because of the appointment, I had failed to eat any real kind of lunch. Mama needs her food, lest she get shaky. I normally eat every three hours, like clockwork, and if I don't I kind of fall apart. And yet, instead of eating while I waited for the prescription like a sane person, I went to the bookstore like a health-hating lunatic. Which is all to say that by the time I picked up Henry, I was trembling and sweaty and even though I had torn into the antibiotic pack right there in the drugstore, my ear infection was not yet healed.

Because we're heading to Utah tomorrow, today was Henry's last day of school. I said I would take him out for a treat, and while I wanted to go to the sit-down place, where a person can sit down and there is air conditioning, he begged to go to this other little coffee shop, where there's nowhere to sit and the entire place fills with post-school children and their parents and you pretty much want to die in there. But I was so addled and sweaty, I said okay, and we headed in.

Aaand then I got into an altercation with the guy behind the counter. I won't go into the boring details, but when a person asks for iced coffee and you give her a hot coffee and she politely tells you she asked for iced, even if you think she's wrong, just give her the damn iced coffee. Especially when it's 90,000 degrees outside, and no one in their right mind would ask for hot coffee.

At any rate, I was already nearing unconsciousness and this guy was so unnecessarily mean and Henry wanted his treat and I just wanted to buy it and get out of there and I had to get the attention of another guy because the first one had refused to help me and had, in fact, taken Henry's treat off the counter and put it back in the display, NO TREAT FOR YOU. And while I tried to get this other guy's attention, I totally lost it. I was a crying, shaking mess. I am sure the other people in there thought I had lost my mind. She really wants her snack, they thought. That Alice Bundles. She sure does like cupcakes.

It all worked out, in the end. Henry got his cupcake, and we got out of there. Scott met us on the street because by then I was really worried I might pass out (don't ask me why I didn't stop for food--my mind was gone). We made it home. And look! At least I had a story to tell you.

The fever

began last Thursday. Henry was in mid-playdate, laughing it up with his pal. Within minutes the happy chatter had subsided, and I could hear some quiet grousing. Then he left his room to tell me that his friend had to leave. "This isn't any fun," he announced. His face was flushed, his eyes glassy. Fifteen minutes before he had been fine. "Blargh?" I said, and felt his forehead, then took his temperature. 104.

His head kind of hurt, he said, but otherwise he felt okay. He had just realized that his friend was no fun and life was terrible, was all. I dosed him with Motrin. In the middle of the night I checked his temperature and it was 106. "Glorgh?!" I muttered, and gave him more Motrin, because it was due, and went on the Internet to see what I should do about a temperature like 106. Wouldn't that cause his brain to explode? But when I checked again it was back down to 102. I wasn't overly alarmed because he was so damned cheerful. Except he was awake, which was weird. All night, every time I checked on him. "Hi there!" he would call out as soon as I walked into the room. As if it was completely fine that he wasn't sleeping. Just lying around, waiting for me to visit him again.

The next day we went to the doctor, and everything checked out fine. His throat wasn't red; his ears were perfection. His eyes were still wet and bizarre, but he was his usual chatty self. The doctor concluded that he had a mystery virus, and we were sent home.

Saturday he lay around, watching television and visiting the Internet, his temperature hovering in the mid 100s, thanks to the fever-reducing medications. At 6:30 p.m., it was time to give him some more. "My eyes feel really hot," he said. It was the first complaint he had uttered all day, and I was alarmed. I felt his forehead and my hand burst into flames. I checked his temperature. It wouldn't even read on the thermometer. HI, it said. I couldn't figure this out. Was the thermometer saying hello to me? HI, it said again. HI. HI. HI. I kept rechecking. It gave me a number. 108. Then another, because that couldn't be right. 106.9. Then it was back over 108. Then it went back to telling me HI. I learned later that the thermometer will register HI if the temperature is above 111. One hundred and eleven degrees. What?

Within minutes I was putting him in a tepid bath, on order of the pediatrician, who had already called ahead to the ER. Scott was out getting the car, and Henry and I were wrestling in the bathroom. Henry was less than happy about the cool-bath idea, and he had heard me talking about the hospital, and he really felt strongly that the hospital was the last place he wanted to go. Get in some lukewarm water, then get hauled off to get poked? No, that was not in his plan at all. I told him he really had no choice in the matter. He begged to differ. This went on for a minute or two, a minute that seemed to stretch on forever while my brain screamed he's going to get himself worked up until his fever climbs even higher oh dear God. Our friend Jen was there, and can testify to the fact that as I persuaded him to get in the tub, he wailed, "The world is lost!" I would have laughed, except I wondered if it really was. Isn't this how it happens? It seems like a harmless virus--and then? I couldn't let my brain go to that place, but my brain was making plans to go there, picking up tourist brochures and hotel info for its trip to Fearville.

Somehow we got him dressed and found our way to the emergency room. Henry was already less feverish, thanks to the drugs, and chatting happily with the nurse and anyone else who would look at him. He managed to confuse the entire staff with his description of his symptoms. "My throat doesn't hurt, but it did feel heavy." "My stomach hurt up here [points to shoulder] but then it traveled down here and now it doesn't hurt but everything tastes thick." I watched the doctor on call admonishing a mom who was feeding her sick baby soda in a bottle. "If that's Coke, I don't know what I'm going to do," the doctor said. I loitered so that I could see what she was going to do. It was Coke. She gave the mom a significant look. It was disappointing. Minutes later, this same doctor said of Henry, "If this kid has a bacterial infection I will eat my hat." "I don’t believe you even own a hat, you liar," I said to her. No, I didn't. I thanked her and waited for the blood test results to come in.

I'm skipping right over the description of the nurse getting blood out of my son. You can't make me talk about that. I won't tell you how Henry cried out, "I'm begging you on my life!" when she blew a vein and had to try again on his other hand. You never heard that part.

So we waited for a long time while Henry lay there, an IV line in his hand in case he needed antibiotics, Scott reading to him from A Field Guide to Monsters, me trying not to imagine all the terrible diseases that were probably wrecking his little body. But then all the blood and urine test results came back negative. Once again, the diagnosis was a virus, and all we could do was wait the damn thing out. Sunday the fever once again went up to 106, but yesterday it only went up to 102. Today the strep test results came back negative, but we figured that because his fever was gone. Gone! And now we are done being sick for the next two years at least. We've paid our dues. I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

Sick day.

- My eyes are burning. Water is coming from them.

- That's because you have a fever, sweetie.

- Look. TEARS.

- Yep, I can see that.

- My throat really hurts when I drink. Hurts and stings.

- Oh boy.

- My nose won't stop sniffling. I'm using a million hundred tissues.

- You're one sick kid, all right.

- My ears are crackling. And when I close my eyes and release the power of my ears, it feels black.

- Wha--?

- It feels black. When I release the power.

- Uh, let's check that temperature again.