The Time I Had The Stomach Flu

Two days of abnormal. That was it, just two days. I teach over 150 kids, so it wasn’t that unlikely that I’d catch the inevitable stomach flu plaguing our city. So, as any good writer, I’m incorporating my insignificant ailment into something productive, such as this blog post. Because for one, I analyze everything, two, it makes me grateful, and three, apparently even the stomach flu is something worth romanticizing.

I was in a super good mood on Tuesday. Went to the gym. Worked out hard. Came home. Put on my ZOOTOPIA ONESIE. Already a good day. I goofed around with my boyfriend, because we are amazing at being stupid together. He made us breakfast. I made us coffee. And we sat and watched The Great British Baking Show for three hours, just wishing we lived in the UK and had a gorgeously equipped kitchen.

And then my grandparents who had driven from Virginia for seven hours to visit for Christmas knocked on the door. And how inconvenient is it that moments after I greeted them with hugs, I would spend the next 48 hours with my head in the toilet? Not so convenient at all. I was so suddenly sicker than I had ever been in my life. I mean 28 trips to the bathroom in less than 6 hours. I almost went to the ER! I didn’t see the light of day for two days straight. Just laid in various spots of the house, foggy and delirious, lowkey wishing I was dead. Batting an eyelid took too much energy. Moving my leg made me nauseous. Not my finest moment. The rare times I caught myself in the mirror were an alarming atrocity.

But then on this third day, everything finally started to take a turn, as sicknesses do, for the better. I had the energy to clean my sheets and my bathroom, and the stomach to eat food, however bland. I was finally able to go back to work, and let me tell you, it felt so good to stretch my stiff, bed-ridden muscles again! I never realized how much my body was used to my dance teaching schedule until it was frozen solid in its tracks for a couple of days. It really just felt great overall to be checking off my to do list and calendar blocks again instead of being stuck in bed in a time warp.

And then, I came home tonight, and I just sat on the end of my bed and read the last few pages of a book I was finishing. Maybe it is just the perfectionist in me, but it felt so good to sit on a bed that was crisp and cleanly made after it had been hot and tangled with sick. And that made me think of how good it felt to eat a chicken tender tonight after work instead of rice and applesauce. And that made me think of how numb your brain goes when your head is in the toilet just waiting for your body to stop throwing up. And that made me think about how sometimes our brains are that numb to begin with, and it takes something like a stomach virus to wake them up.

Sometimes sickness makes me feel like a new person; refreshed on the upswing. You know the feeling after you’ve had a cold and then all your senses start coming back to life again? You can taste, you can smell, you can swallow, you can hear again. It is like you are being reborn into this wonderful gift; the gift of normalcy. But is it really normal? I mean, our God-given lives are a pretty extraordinary gift.

While I try my very hardest not to take anything in my life for granted, I can’t claim to be perfect at it. But unexpected circumstances like these make me extra grateful for my muscles, for clean beds, for showers, for toothbrushes, for red Powerade, for Lysol, for medicine, for time when my busy body self is forced to rest, for the family that takes care of me, for my boyfriend who would do anything for me, and for the extraordinary “normal” I had missed out on while my life had to be paused.

Tonight, I am grateful that I can sit on the edge of my bed because I choose to sit, not because I can’t stand. I am grateful that I can look at my Christmas tree without weary eyes and remember that it is Christmas because my brain is no longer in survival mode. And I’m grateful to think to myself that tomorrow, I can do anything I want to do, because I have my body back. I can stand. I can walk. I can breathe. I can eat. And that just feels like freedom.

Merry Christmas, everyone! It is 12:30am. And I am awake, because my not-so-sick-anymore body is allowing me to be. You all keep your hands washed, now. And don’t take life too seriously.

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