The Damn Teriyaki

*Warning: this post contains some graphic details and a lot of potty humour. Consider yourself warned.

I am shaking my head in awe at that which is the human body and how quickly it can repair itself and return to normal. In the last six hours, my body has put me through physical hell, nearly to the point of phoning 9-1-1 because I thought I was going to die. Or at least I wanted to die because then I would be out of my misery. Now, at 11:30pm, all is back to normal and I feel like baking sugar cookies with the dough I made last night. But I think just to be on the safe side, I'll give my stomach a few more hours.

I got Joel off the bus at 3:30 and went through the usual after school routine. As soon as I had him set up with his movie, I realized I needed to lay down. I went out to the couch in the living room and laid down (at this point, I should mention that I still have the cold I've been dealing with all week so I'm phlegmy, stuffed up and coughing). All I wanted was to close my eyes for twenty minutes. An hour and twenty minutes later, I opened my eyes and realized with horror I had .03 seconds to get to the bathroom before I was about to lose my lunch. In this .03 seconds, I had to make the decision as to which toilet was going to be on the receiving end of my forthcoming 'gift'. I knew the main bathroom had just been cleaned two days earlier, but when my mind realized that everyone uses that bathroom, my body made a quick left turn into our bedroom...I did not want to stick my face where everyone else's bums had already been today. So that left just the master bathroom (aka my bathroom). This bathroom had not just been cleaned two days prior, but it was the safer alternative. When I reached my bathroom and as I was kneeling down on the floor, I knew I had only nano-seconds before I threw up and yet I was still questioning whether I would have time to quickly spray down the toilet with Fantastik and give it a general clean up. Let's just say that the toilet did receive a spray...just not the sanitizing one I had in mind.

After emptying my stomach of the day's contents (a banana, some left over chicken teriyaki stir-fry and a chocolate seashell), I phoned Mike at work and pleaded with him to come home. He is a shift worker and so he told me he'd let his boss know, but that it might take some time to find a replacement. I was now dealing with a flip-floppy stomach, a bowel that was toying with me as to when it was going to make it's move (and yes, that pun was intended) and a splitting headache from my right eyebrow that continued in a rainbow pattern up and over the right side of my head. It was now 6:00 and I knew I had to feed Joel, but options were limited. There was no way I was going to cook anything and Colby had already eaten the last of the left overs. I considered macaroni, but it was all the way down in the basement pantry. I probably could have mustered up the energy to go downstairs and retrieve one...I just don't think I would have made it back up the stairs. So I ended up toasting some English muffins and slathering Cheez Whiz onto them. This was solely to tide Joel over until Mike could get home and feed him a real supper. Joel wasn't more than two bites in to his muffin when I began to cry. The pain in my head and throughout my entire body was so intense, the only thing I could do was cry. Joel started to call for Colby to tell him that I was crying and all I could do was poke Joel in the cheek and shake my head "No". I didn't want Colby to know that I was crying...I don't know why but I would have been embarrassed.

The night gets a little foggy for me at this point. Mike did end up coming home from work. He fed Joel supper and then packed them up to take them down to their mom's house around 8:00. During this time, I know I tried laying down quite a few times, but the pain was so intense, I could do nothing more than sit up with a wet hand towel pressed into my face and cry. I remember sleeping on my bathroom floor using my previously discarded clothes as a pillow and sobbing. I remember that when the cats would jump up onto the bed, it felt like Andre the Giant had just cannonballed off the roof onto Mike's side of the bed. I remember voraciously gulping down a cup of water and then instantly throwing it up. I remember feeling like I was sleeping in the belly of a ship that was caught in a nasty storm and begging for the room to stop spinning. I remember contemplating phoning 9-1-1, but then realizing I didn't want to pay $400 for an ambulance trip when Mike would be home within the hour (he was going to go shopping and get me goodies to help soothe my aches and pains and throwing up and other unmentionable activities). Plus, with how badly my body was aching, I knew there was no way I could handle having an IV put into my wrist...that would have sent me over the edge. I remember trying to retrace all that I had eaten and all that I could have possibly done today to contract such a nasty virus. My mind was left spinning..."Everyone else ate the chicken stir-fry and they're all okay. The bananas weren't rotten. Maybe it was the chocolate seashell that I ate while getting my hair done? It didn't taste funny...in fact, it tasted like what I imagine heaven to look like. Did I lick a handrail sometime today that I've forgotten about? Maybe I've got worms. Yeah...I bet it's worms. Jenn (my sister) just told all about how easy it is to get worms from dogs because it's in their poop and then the dog licks their bum and they get the worm eggs in their mouth and then they lick your hand and you use your hand to wipe your mouth...ooooooooooooohhhhhh, I don't feel good."

And then I crawled into the main bathroom. This was where I could do the other unmentionable activity so that my bathroom would stay cleaner for upchucking. As I was going about my business, my stomach decided that one exit point wasn't quite enough to handle all of this. I had just enough time to turn my head towards the tub before I threw up again. It was when I caught sight of three lone pieces of bamboo shoots streaking across the bottom of the tub** that I realized, "The teriyaki!!! I used the honey garlic teriyaki on my stir-fry at lunch. Nobody else used it...it must have been the damn teriyaki!". And I kid you not...I instantly felt better. I had (and still have) a minor headache, but it's nothing I can't deal with. And I am seriously dehydrated, but Mike loaded me up with Gatorade so I should be replenished by late tomorrow morning. It has now been three hours since I threw up (or other) and I think I'm on the mend. I am, however, ridiculously behind on the holiday schedule I have mapped out for myself. We have four days of entertaining starting tomorrow evening and I haven't even finished all of my baking. But, my family will understand. And I'm sure they would prefer the piece of mind of knowing that the "surprise" in my Double Chocolate Surprise squares are not bamboo shoots.

And so, I won't post again until after the 26th. I've got some lost time to make up for!

Merry Christmas everyone! Here's to a safe, happy, healthy holiday season! All the best to you and yours!

** On a side note, I was impressed to see that the pieces of bamboo were still in their entirety without a bite taken out of them. That means I either eat too fast or the bamboo has the mystifying capability of reconstructing itself inside the human stomach. I'm going to side with the former.