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I only rarely get sick…

I often brag that living in Guinea for five years built me a kickass immune system. And the past three years, my natural ability of not getting ill everytime someone sneezes has been significantly helped by the fact that Chéri and I have taken all precautions we could, not to allow covid in our home (and we haven’t… So far).

Now, before I go any further, I’d like to warn you Lovelies. This post will be a little graphic, and I prefer to tell you now, before you lose any precious time of yours, and leave the Cove with an “Ewww” look on your face. Neither of us want that. So if you’re a little faint-hearted, just head back to scrolling, I am sure there are lots of lovely posts waiting for you in the Bloggosphere.

Ok, now that you’ve been warned, let’s rewind to Thursday afternoon.

Chéri and I were both working, and when I walked back to the living room for one of my breaks, he told me something like “I feel kinda funny”. I didn’t make a big fuss about it since, you know, we all do from time to time.

After work, I headed to the kitchen to prepare dinner. The “funny” feeling had now upgraded to him being nauseous, and I thought he might not have eaten enough for lunch, and that our calzones would make up for that.

But I was wrong.

Not long after putting said calzones in the oven, I heard Chéri in the bathroom. It apparently was a false alarm, but then he went a second time, and I knew the third wouldn’t be the charm!

We went to sit in the living room, waiting for dinner to be ready, and just before the time to take it out of the oven, Chéri put the TV on pause, and rushed to the toilet again. And all hells broke loose.

I had heard of projectile vomiting, but I had never seen it, in person. Actually, the idea I had of it came from a scene from the movie Problem Child 2 (see for yourself, if it doesn’t already ring a bell):

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I was really impressed.

For one thing, I have no clue where Chéri’s body found sooooo much stuff to throw out. There is no way that was all ingested in the last 24h period. No dang way! My best guess is that we have inside pouches that our body stores random digested foods and liquids in, just in case it (our body) feels like putting such a show on. And I must bow to that, because… W-O-W!

I was also impressed that Chéri was able to aim so precisely, that not one drop of all that vomit missed the toilet. Not one!! With very little practice, too, as he very rarely throws up. When it all started, I was mentally getting prepared to have to clean the whole bathroom, since I knew that even after forty-some years, he still sometimes misses the spot when he pees. I was nice enough not to bring this thought up just yet, and that’s when bad turned to worse.

Because, I found out that orifices tend to be jealous, and attention-seeking. And mind you, at the time, our attention was entirely focused on his mouth, hoping his nostrils wouldn’t get involved. In all honesty, it was so intense, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Chéri’s eye sockets and ears had starded leaking too.

So guess who decided that all of this wasn’t fair?

Yup… Someone downstairs thought, “well, let’s join the parade, invited or not!”

And I had the fastest mind debate of all times… Should I get a bucket and prompt Chéri to change position to sit on the throne? I wasn’t sure we had a big enough bucket for the situation, and it seemed to me that the simple act of changing position involved many risks of making things even worse.

So I just stayed there, encouraging Chéri, until he was done, and helped him clean up after the storm.

Needless to say that my apetite had dimmed a little, so I wrapped our calzones, thinking it would make a lovely Friday dinner, and I settled for a little bowl of chicken noodle soup. Chéri nibbled on salty crackers and I wrapped him in my best blanket, and we went to bed early because he was a little feverish (and quite miserable).

Fast forward to Friday.

Both of us were back to work, and that morning, I wasn’t really hungry, so I skipped breakfast. Just after lunchtime (that I also skipped), I started feeling weird. Chéri was fine, and at first, I thought my uneasiness must have been a bit psychological. But when I suddenly started gagging uncontrollably, I rushed to the bathroom, just in case.

See, my body works in mysterious ways. And technically speaking, I can’t throw up, unless I want to. Seems impossible? Well, actually, it is true. About two decades ago, I had a bariatric surgery that significantly reduced the size of my stomach, and I always worked really hard not to stretch it again. So to this day, unless I’ve just recently eaten, no matter how hard my diaphragm and tummy muscles try to push whatever’s in my stomach out of my body, if I don’t bend forward and keep my head out, I can’t vomit.

Which doesn’t mean that they (my muscles) don’t try their best regardless. And I look like a giant standing cat, trying to throw up a hair ball in the air. It might look funny from the outside, but it really really hurts. Because when my body is on a mission, nothing will stop it. And no matter how many times I tried to remind it that we hadn’t swallowed a thing since that bowl of soup, it desperately tried to get something out, anything, even if it needed to torture me to get the job done.

At some point, I did consider eating, just for the sake of having something to throw up. But that would have been simple food waste, and I hated the idea.

So the on and off useless gagging went on for hours. And then, as you would probably guess, my rear end got jealous, and decided to get involved. And I had to plead again to the fact that if there was nothing to throw up, I had nothing to… Well, you get the picture!

This circus went on for a while… On the bright side, I didn’t have to debate about “positions”. I just sat on the toilet, releasing air that came from God knows where, while holding a bucket, just to please my stupid need to throw up.

At some point, I just wished that I wouldn’t end up turned inside-out, lying on the bathroom floor.

But by the end of the evening, just like Chéri the night before, I got a pretty strong and quite sudden fever. I thought about taking medicine to lower it a little, and decided not to. After all, fever is a self defence mechanism, right? If I’d had enough energy left, I would have cheared for it! Go fever! Go fever! (with the pompoms and all)

Last night wasn’t my best, by all means, but when I woke up this morning (for the 63rd time), everything was back to normal.

And I thought I should write about our 48h of pure fun. Because, you know…

I only rarely get sick!