Pride Cometh Before a Poop

Mankind is capable of many things.  Would you like to buy an island shaped like a pam tree?  If you have enough money, then go ahead, it's yours.  Have you always wanted to fly into space?  Buy your ticket now.  Smashing gold nuclei into one another at .9 c?  Well, that's bordering on blase.  Truth be told, we like to think that when we want, we can make nature tremble before our might.

And then nature says to us,"Yeah, I don't think that's really the case."

Case in point: The Norwalk Virus, now called the norovirus.  It's just a tiny little thing, just a couple dozen nanometers across, that can wreak so much havoc on mankind's greatest achievement - ourselves - that it renders us incapable of ingesting food.  Countless pleasure cruises have been ruined by norovirus in the last few decades, because this thing is so contagious it can sicken hundreds in the space of a few hours.  Thanks to the fact that it lacks a lipid envelope, it's pretty much immune to detergents and many cleaning agents - so no amount of scrubbing will do it in.  Chlorine will clean it up well (and therefore so will bleach), as will heat, but other than that, you are on your own.

What does the norovirus do?  Well, it causes 90% of the cases of the 24-hour stomach bug.  You know the one: vomiting, diarrhea, stabbing abdominal pain, weakness.

And that's where I come in.

A few days ago my wife went to the hospital thinking that she was about to have a baby - which she did.  While we were there,we overheard just a brief snippet of a conversation:
Nurse 1: "She had a bowel movement?"
Nurse 2: "Several. *Pause* In her wheelchair."

We thought it was funny.  Heck, we thought it was hilarious.  In reality, it was a portent of our doom.

On Saturday night, after Kirsten had her baby, Lorelei started throwing up.  Violently.  She spent the entire night barfing, ralphing, upchucking, vomiting, and horking.  At first it was sad and pathetic, because she was crying.  Later it became worrisome, because there was so much of it, and it ran all through the night.  She slept on the floor of her room, on a succession of towels, which she would periodically throw up onto.  By the time Sunday morning rolled around, I figured she was pretty well done.  She was tired and worn out, but seemed to be otherwise OK.  There was a pathetic little barf after lunch, but other than that, she seemed OK.  "Well," I thought, "that's surely the worst of it."

No, it was not - because then I got sick.

Have you ever thrown up rice?  It turns into this esophagus-shaped adhesive tube of grain coming up from your stomach.  Up to that point, vomiting up a single foot-long rice cylinder was the worst experience of my life.

Up to that point.

Then the rest of the food came up - the chicken that was dinner, a Cherry Coke from right before bed, a burger, two orders of french fries, and another Coke.

Then the bile.

Bile is an awful thing to throw up, because when it comes up it's actually mixed with intestinal juices and stomach acids and some digested food.  It's this brownish-green muddy stuff and it just pools on the bottom of your toilet.

And that was the worst experience of my life - up to that point.

I felt pretty good today.  Really good, actually.  My vomiting had stopped, my diarrhea was on the decline, I had energy and wasn't sore at all.

Then, without warning, nature reared her ugly, spiteful head.  Mankind's hubris was paid back to me with interest.  And for the first time in the last twenty-five years, I shit my pants.

Nature wins again.