Influenza. The Party Crasher from HELL.

So, its 2012. Pfffbbbbbbbbbtttttttttttt……

Last New Years, 2011, started off LITERALLY with TylerLee in the ER with an avulsion fracture of her left hand that required a surgical repair by a special hand surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The irony of this is it was the SAME surgeon that did the pollicization on Kylies hand ten years ago. (born without a functioning thumb on her right hand, Kylie had a surgery that took her index finger and transferred it to where her thumb should have been)

This New Years was DESTINED to be better …. RIGHT? I mean 2011 was a freakin doozy. Tyler’s hand surgery. Jordyn, TylerLee AND Kylie had different heart issue diagnoses, I had ANOTHER bowel resection and although have tentatively been diagnosed with Ogilvie’s Syndrome or more likely Crohns, I have been a naughty patient and refused to follow up with GI because he wants to … you know… scope my butthole…, Joe had the diagnosis of no less than 4 different skin cancers, MOHS surgery and a round of chemo cream that nearly killed him. And the rest has been blocked out of my brain by my preservation instinct. So, since I sweetly ate shit with a smile on my face all year last year, and repeatedly said “Please, sir, may I have some more!” to God, baby Jesus, Mary (the virgin, not the Magdalene) and any other biblical character I thought would listen, I figured my Crap Quota had been filled. At least for a little while. I was sure, that in my altruistic affection for everyone around me, the limitless help and assistance I offer to all who need it, the fact that I lasted another year without even maiming one of my children. Well, at least not intentionally, that maybe. JUST MAYBE 2012 would be

The Year… of Plenty… of NOTHING!!!!

Who the fuck was I kidding?

New Years Eve, 2012 had begun with such promise. Meg, our amazing, dear friend from Massachusetts has joined us for the evening along with small group of very loved people. We gathered at my house prepared to eat, drink, play Catchphrase, eat more, drink more and yes.. play more Catchphrase. Joe was zipping around the kitchen so fast I had to stop and check to see if his skin sparkled. Our 12 person table was rife with wanton goodies. There was a fire roaring in the pit out back and drinks chilling in the kitchen. Hell, I even had lipgloss on. I was the frikkin hostess with the mostest. I was channeling my inner Paula Deen, Martha Stewart and Rosanne Barr all at the same time.

Around 11:30 there was a minor glitch. Brother Love (Ryan) threw up. Awwwww….. right? Poor bubba! He ran to the potty. Got there in time, kept it all together, and with a flush and the wipe of a warm wash cloth, he was back in action. Well… he actioned himself right up to my bedroom with his partner in crime and half blind, toothless, dementia riddled Jack Russell Terrorist, Skippy.

Tragedy averted, back out by the firepit I went where we we surrounding the firepit playing Catchphrase in the unseasonably temperate air. Side note: Catchphrase is a great way to learn which of your friends (yourself included) are either Rainman smart or proof evolution can go in reverse.

New Years Eve, 11:55pm. My guests stream in  from the back deck,  I had just gone to the kitchen to get out the champagne flutes and bottles of Asti when KaseyMae comes up the basement stairs and literally 3 inches from the bathroom door, power heaves all over the hallway. DOH!

Quick, like and good hostess would, I don rubber gloves, Lysol spray, rags and my trusty bottle of bleach cleaner. Wham bam, no thank you ma’am, the pukey child and all of her rejected evenings snacks are cleaned up, disinfected and sent off with a glass of warm ginger ale.

11:58 and Joe is calling from the other room, “Hey! Where’s the champagne!”

“Coming honey!”

Gloves stripped off, hands washed, bottles open, hands cut opening bottles, glasses poured….

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

clink! clink! (we are toasting here, get it??) clink!

Kisses and well wishes abound. Back outside we go.

Catchphrase begins again and it is continued to be revealed to me, that if all of our 30 and 40-something year old brains were hamster wheels, most of our hamsters would be dead, in a coma, or trying to run in the wrong direction… my hamster got lost, somewhere around 1999 I suspect. The fire is stoked, the laughing is riotous, the answers are more wrong and hilarious than accurate and educated.

Somewhere in the vicinity of 1am, from inside we hear what sounds like cheering at a Brazilian soccer game. I mean it was LOUD. There was whooping, and hollering, I swear someone had a vuvuzella, but there was also, very faintly an “Ewwwww OMG, that’s NAAAAAASSSTTYYYY!!!”

Now, I don’t mean bad-ass honey badger nasty. This was- someone is puking- nasty.

Thinking its time to ship KaseyMae off to my shower and bed too, I see in the bathroom its Charlie. WTF?

Well, at least he made it INTO the bathroom … right?

Hell no… he made it to the toilet. He just forgot to point his face INTO the toilet. Instead he bent over and puked IN FRONT of it. All over the wall, the throw rug, himself. Dear Lord!

I strip the boy naked, ship him off to my shower. Clean up bathroom, and take the biological warfare to laundry room.

Back upstairs,bleach, rinse, repeat….

I decide its time to separate the tribes. Sick children banished to basement like the leper colonies of Hawaii and Greece. Team Lazarus FTW! Well children (including Kasey Maes unfortunate friend Cat, who picked this night, of all nights to have her first sleep over with us ) were tucked into bunk beds upstairs. My house has now become an episode of Survivor: Anthrax Island. The next person who pukes, gets voted off the island and sent to the dungeon…

And back out I went to my guests.

Whew.

We finish up, bid farewell to our guests, Joe, Meg and I clean up, putter around, turn off lights, blow out candles, lock doors…when suddenly, from upstairs we hear “WHOOOOOOOOAAAAHHHHH!!!!!”

and what seemed like the “Splaaaaaaat” heard round the world.

Lo and behold, Jordyn, on her top bunk, leaned over and power heaved onto the floor in what could only be described as a waterfall from hell. Satan’s very own Niagara of shrimp, baby quiche, chips and salsa, more shrimp and cookies. Point blank into her brand new pair of Ugg clogs. It was like they were two fancy, fleece lined, overpriced, size 4 containers of nastiness and all things vile. Props to Joe as he took over the clean up process on that one because I was seriously about to pack my shit and run away. Seriously….

Its almost 2 am now and I decide its time to take this horse out to pasture and shoot it and take poor Catherine home. Still sitting in the bottom bunk with a look on her face that said so, so much that probably included but was not limited to “what the BEEP???” poor Cat had some serious maneuvering to do to get out of that bed….

With Meg riding shotgun, I drive Cat home (the whole 5 blocks), apologize to her mother in advance for what I’m only all too sure Catherine will be doing soon as well… . Initially I suspected Meg tagged along for moral support, but I now realize Joe probably sent her with me to make sure I came back home!

Back home, I discover downstairs, Anthrax Island has been busy and towels never to survive the evening are being sacrificed en masse to the Greek god Emesis.

Back upstairs Jordyn is in my bathroom bowing to the porcelain gods and Joe has successfully cleaned what was left of Jordyns trip down Regurgitate Lane.  We contemplated food poisoning as the sheer speed at which the vomiting struck person after person after person. But we ALL ate the same things, It couldn’t be! Right? None of the grown ups were puking…

Yet……

Somewhere between saying “I have never seen so much puke” and “God, I hope it wasn’t the shrimp.” I drifted off into a vomit fume, exhaustion and just a little bit of Baileys Irish Cream induced coma.

Less than an hour later,  Angels from heaven carried me on their gold and fleece wings to the toilet in my bathroom. (Because I sure as F don’t remember getting there myself) I swear, on all that I love, my stomach, duodenum and sluggish, scarred and resected intestines decided they wanted to take a walk. Outside my body. That is the only thing that could explain the violent, gut wrenching, heaving spasms that took over all control of my body. I puked up things I ate New Years Eve 1978 at my Grandmothers house. That puke session was so epic, I went back in time. I had flash backs of lying in my childhood bedroom, unable to move, opening my mouth and the chili I had eaten for dinner practically crawling out of my mouth on its own from my tummy. For what seemed like 20 minutes or possibly 20 years, since time travel was happening here, I perched my head on the seat of the toilet. In the dark and with no glasses on, I cannot attest to the accuracy of my aim, but really, at that point, Oprah could have walked in my bathroom and told me I won my very own unicorn that shits golden Kitchen Aide appliances and I wouldn’t have cared.

I could hear Jordyn vomiting over the side of my bed, (thankfully I had the forethought to lie out towels before climbing into bed earlier. ) so I finished up the party I was attending in the bathroom and climbed back into bed to try and comfort my retching daughter. By the time I got there she had passed back out. I climbed back into bed, wrapped my arms around Joe and cried myself to sleep. I remember waking up, I remember having a fever, I remember thinking there were Monchichis (remember those monkey dolls that sucked their thumbs) sitting at the foot of my bed harassing me. (it was probably children, and my fever twisted brain turned them into fugly little monkeys)

When I woke up, it was Tuesday. Yes, Tuesday. And I’m not even exaggerating. Apparently in my absence Taylor came down with it and by Wed. TylerLee was puking in the girls bathroom at school. Cody missed three days of school and Joe, the superman that he is, fought it off like The Beiber fights off throngs of tweens with too much mascara on. Although he physically missed no days at work there were two days that the only thing present at his desk was his body, because between the flu meds dulling his senses and ability to remember to breath on his own and his brain had shutting itself off to protect it from the fever tearing thru his body, he was absolutely, positively useless.

And THAT my friends, is how 2012 began for us.

I try and put a positive spin on things and the only one I could come up with is this…

when you start the new year dead, there is no where to go but up.

RIGHT?????

A week and a half later and the body aches and pains are STILL there, but the worst part of the flu is over. Sadly, the only way to know you are actually over the flu is

1.) you care if you shit your pants.

2.) You don’t wish death on everyone you know not vomiting.

3.) The pee and poop you find on the bathroom floor is the dogs and not yours.

So, who was YOUR New Years Eve?????