Re: Bad gastro virus for pumpkin+crabby husband

[Guest guest]

Arrrrgh!!!!!! Our first mistake was going away for the weekend when I'm

supposed to feed 13 people Christmas Eve.

We went to the Wisconsin Dells and stayed at the Atlantis -- NEVER GO THERE.

They were apparently having a problem with their pool, it was wayyyyyyyy

over-chlorinated. I'm all for chlorine to kill the germs but this was

practically

toxic! If you inhaled close to the water you literally gagged and choked.

's bathing suit was a completely different color after her first dip.

Management denied any problem.

Anyway, all of us but Kate got chlorine burns. got them the worst, she

was miserable. Kate escaped because it was the big pool with all the chlorine

(not the kiddie water park area), and she pretty much stayed on the steps, not

going in.

So anyway, on day two or so Kate had this wicked diarrhea and I came up with

the theory that they had had some gastro virus outbreak and that was the

reason for all the chlorine, which DH promptly poo-poo'd (pun intended). She was

fine the next day though. When it comes to health issues, DH likes to assume

nobody has any problems rather than rely on the oft-proven Mommy's instinct, it

seems.

DH did complain about the pool three times and finally a manager admitted the

problem and we got a partial refund once he forced her to look at his hairy

burned gams!

Got home and the next day Kate started vomiting. That was Wednesday. Warned

all the family members I was supposed to feed Christmas Eve, but she wasn't TOO

awful bad. Seen worse with of course. But was fine so far! Good

thing I thought, since my 1-1/2 yr old nephew glommed onto 's water bottle

at one point before dinner.

Well, Xmas dinner was great, Kate was tired all day, clingy and had had a big

diarrhea or two but still manageable.

Then today, Christmas Day, Kate had two big diarrhea blowouts (lots of

cleanup!!), and had watery diarrhea once. Then was fine for a bit,

then

later she was writhing on the floor miserable, she felt so sick. Funny, at

11am she was perfectly fine, at 1:30pm, writhing, 2pm vomiting and sitting on

the

toilet just pouring water out her backside. Poor thing. At one point she was

sitting there with big diarrhea, opened her legs, looked down and threw up

between her legs into the toilet. I had a " throw-up bowl " at the ready, so I

spared her that indignity (and aiming challenge!) as quickly as possible.

Now it's almost 10pm and I'm convinced there's no way she'll make it through

this without needing IV fluids. She's only had three diarrheas but each one

involved huge amounts of fluid lost. The last two times, she's been sitting

there pouring fluid out her bottom while simultaneously throwing up every ounce

of

fluid in her belly. We give her sips of water and pedialyte to rehydrate her,

but she's soooo thirsty and wants more and more and you can only put her off

so long, and then she ends up vomiting every single bit, including dry heaves

for good measure. Every time I leave the room DH allows her as much liquid as

she wants and then she throws up.

DH has been bickery about it... probably the stress. He thinks it's nonsense

not to give Imodium, I've explained the very many reasons the doc insists we

don't do it. I've quoted articles, etc. etc. He also thinks should be

allowed to drink as much as she wants, I've explained that it overloads her

tummy

and she vomits every bit of it back up, she needs to take tiny sips slowly

with breaks to let it stay down. He felt that was akin to " not even trying " to

rehydrate her, I explained that if she gets two piddly ounces in over the

course of an hour and keeps them down, that's much better than chugging four

ounces

and promptly throwing every bit of it back up. Two being better than zero. He

finally believed me the FIFTH time she drank until sated and then heaved

until it was all out.

Her eyes are shadowed and a little sunken, her lips are a little dry but she

still has a moist tongue. She has no fever but she has goosebumps and feels

cold. I called the ped, as it's clearly risky to have her not be able to keep

anything down and yet be having this much output to the toilet. DH clearly does

not get the significance of this situation. Rather than being concerned where

he should be, he's being pissy toward me instead. Sigh. Merry Christmas.

Finally at 9:30pm I asked if he wanted to go to bed in case it was going to

be a long night. He said he'd been thinking about doing that. Quite frankly, I

just wanted him out of the way. He said goodnight and went upstairs, no kiss,

no " Merry Christmas " . Sigh. It's a shame because he loves the holidays and has

been soooooo nice and sweet the last couple of days, way more so than usual.

Anyway, the ped said to give only pedialyte or pedialyte pops at this point,

and if she's still not keeping anything down and losing water after a couple

hours, go ahead and go to the hospital. Well, thought pedialyte pops

sounded good (I reminded her they are not regular popsicles, they are salty) and

I

was willing to go out and get them (didn't see DH volunteering to go out in

the cold for them), but then realized it's Christmas Day, nothing's open!!!!

Sigh.

At least we have pedialyte. She has never liked any flavor but since that's

all I'm letting her have, she's willing to have the plain (unflavored). So far

she's kept the small sips with big waits in between (DH finally relented to my

method) down for almost two hours.

Oh, we did try an Emetrol-like product, but that was during DH's ministering

where he gave her unlimited SPRITE and she burped the sprite back up then

later vomited everything else, so it wasn't a fair test but still didn't do the

trick as well as the tiny-sip-and-wait method.

Seeing as this is Day One, I'm thinking we're in for a fight here. Day Three

has always been the worst with every one of our gastro viruses. Sigh. Can't

mention THAT though or DH will pounce on it as ridiculous or something. I'm

aggravated because he was all vocal nonstop saying over and over how Kate would

not get diarrhea even after all her vomiting (we with experience know the worse

the first part, the worse the second part!), and I'm the one with infectious

diarrhea on my FEET, jammies, arm, etc. this morning, cleaning up poor Kate

(who likes to be tidy). Viruses don't know the power of positive thinking, and I

am annoyed that Mr. Pessimist/Mr. Worrywart in all other aspects of life is

all of a sudden being so SURE this is all going to be neat and easy. Yeah right.

Then was lying on her back on the couch downstairs (which is new) and

all of a sudden she's like a fountain, shooting infectious vomitwater. I

reallllllly don't need to catch this... the one time I've caught one of 's

gastro viruses DH caught it too, so you can guess who was changing diarrhea

diapers every 20 minutes while simultaneously wanting to be hospitalized!

SIGH. Have I complained enough?!!!?!!! If you're up tonight, please pray for

a peaceful night for us. I just want her to keep down this pedialyte and not

have any more vomits or diarrheas... tomorrow is a new battle.

(mom to , age 5-1/2, dairy intolerant-related GERD -- currently

has polysaccharide antibody def, previously had transient IgG, IgA, t-cell &

other defs... and also to Kate, born 9/19/02, dairy intolerant)

[Guest guest]

Well, a couple hours after my post, DH came down to see how things were and

apologized for being so difficult. So that was nice.

I had left on the couch dozing, giving her sips of pedialyte every time

she stirred. Finally at Midnight I decided we'd done enough catching up (no

more vomiting, thank you very much!!) on fluid she could go to bed. DH carried

her up.

I was beyond amazed that nobody was up with diarrhea or vomiting overnight.

Next day, took Kate to my sisters' house for a day-after-Christmas luncheon.

was actually much better, but stuck to the couch all day.

Then...........

At about 3am the next morning, it hit DH and I BOTH, within about 15 minutes

of each other. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it was sooooooooooooooo horrible. Ohhhhhhh...

ohhhhhh... sooooo soooooo horrible. I camped out on the bathmat in the

downstairs bathroom, DH was lying in the tub upstairs!!! Quite a sight I bet we

were!!

This bug is different than the one going around here... the vomiting and

diarrhea hit simultaneously. FUN! Arrrrrgh. The only good thing is you sort of

get

it over with more quickly.

So we're 30-some hours after the initial explosions, and I've actually

ingested some plain chicken noodle soup. I was joking with DH today, " Looking

for a

way to lose those extra holiday pounds quickly?!!! "

The kids were AMAZING yesterday... played by herself all day and helped

entertain Kate, she was offering to take care of us and get us a " throw-up

bowl " if we needed it. Very sweet and understandably understanding.

MIL brought us bread and imodium and cola syrup. I took advil for body aches

and cola syrup for nausea... that stuff is great because it calms the tummy

and it has caffeine, so you pep up a bit. I avoided the imodium, thinking I'd

rather wait and see if I'd wouldn't rather flush this virus out than contain it,

ya know? The diarrhea was obviously getting better as the day wore on, so I

figured I made the right decision.

So it seems the worst is over and everybody's pulling through fine. Ugh what

a mess!!! HATE gastro viruses SOOOOOOOOOOOO

much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for your thoughts --

(mom to , age 5-1/2, dairy intolerant-related GERD -- currently

has polysaccharide antibody def, previously had transient IgG, IgA, t-cell &

other defs... and also to Kate, born 9/19/02, dairy intolerant)