4th trimester: Typhoid Lucy

We've emerged from a minor epidemic at our house. Last Thursday morning, I was sitting on the couch with Lucy at about 8:15am when she suddenly ejected her pacifier on my lap. Before I had time to process how odd that was, she delivered a giant load of vomit directly from her stomach to mine. Rather than follow my instinct to jump to my feet and fling her across the room, I calmly sat and received three more servings of the morning's breakfast in an effort to save the couch and carpet as best I could. And so it began.

Lucy was doing better by Friday afternoon, unfortunately that is just about when Sara started heading downhill. After a night of listening to Sara vomit, we awoke to the sound of Stella coughing in bed. You guessed it, she wasn't clearing her throat. I had seen the writing on the wall the previous evening and had stopped eating, so I didn't actually throw-up, but by the afternoon I too was experiencing all the other fabulous symptoms including nausea, a nice fever, and some ridiculous joint pain. Did I mention that Lucy's recovery was short lived? She was the only one lucky enough to get phase 2 of this virus - again striking on Saturday.

So there we were on a cold and blustery winter day - all four of us afflicted. It was a medieval scene - me with my black hooded sweatshirt pulled tight over my head to ward off the chills, carrying a bucket of vomit to the garage, and then returning moments later to hand wash a pair of footed pajamas that found themselves playing the role of back-up diaper when the Pampers simply gave up. It was really hard to fathom and I suspect we will never have a day quite that bad again. I think the only thing that could have made it worse would have been if the dog had started barfing when we finally crawled wearily to bed that night. Oh wait....he did! Yes, Roy deposited three loads of vomit in our house over the course of three hours that night. I know they say dogs can't catch human viruses, but the coincidence seems too remarkable to believe.

Anyhow, that's the story. It is probably more information than is necessary, but I need to make sure I remember this day in the future when I am complaining about anything.

Since pictures to support the tale probably aren't appealing, I have attached a few random shots I just discovered from the last couple months.