It got me
The story of my first ever most horrible stomach flu
Paul’s 60th was on June 16th. His favorite thing is that he was born on 6/16/66. We had big plans, plans for a while. Booked a room at the fanciest hotel we were to ever stay at. Just one night at the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz. We would get up early that Tuesday morning, drive to Santa Cruz, have some breakfast, and Paul would hit the waves. While he surfed, I could watch the water, read, go to a café, whatever. We knew the coastal weather would suit me, and my feet always love being on and in the sand, as long as it’s cool out.
The pain in my gut started when we got up, but I was sure that with some food and time, it would subside. Paul asked for the first time if we should cancel. I shook my head, let’s press on.
Like we’d planned, we hit the road, picked up some yogurt and bananas, which I thought would cure me, though turned out I could only eat a bit of. I was nauseas, a little headachy, but not terrible. Again, Paul asked if we should cancel. No way! We’re going. I’ll either feel like shit here or there, resting on the beach or pool-side or in our gorgeous room, overlooking the ocean.
We did get there, and we did go to a diner. I was only able to eat one slice of toast and forced down about half my hash browns. I managed an egg, but that didn’t feel right. None of it felt right, but my stomach had this burning, like it was empty, too empty, so I had thought a meal could settle it.
No.
We got to the hook, a popular surf spot, and Paul went for it. I rested in the passenger seat of the car for the duration, kind of in and out of a snooze, cringing, feeling worse.
We went over to the hotel at about 12:30, and, by then, I was flu-ish. Tolerable, but sick and getting worse. We couldn’t check in until about 2:00, so we lay there, at the pool, facing the ocean, right there, looking out, starting to want to curl up and make it all stop. Not yet dying. Damn, that view was incredible. Up high. Very fancy. Our chaises were so comfy, the view: our feet and the ocean. The scene was classy Cali.
As soon as our room was ready, I was like, yes, let’s bounce and get me lying in bed. I could barely hang on for the eight story ride up the elevator. I chose to have our bags sent up, including Paul’s surfboard. We were just staying the night, but they had stored them for us when preparing our room and I really couldn’t wait or carry anything anyway. We’d never had a “bellhop” before and we had to figure out how to tip him so we’d be ready and not look like jerks when he got to our room.
That was it for me. I got in bed, and, oh, what a bed! What a room! The ocean view we get in Seaside, Oregon, that view is spectacular. The room is also wonderful. But this, this room was for out of our tax bracket. I wasn’t feeling all the excitement. I couldn’t make it to the balcony to take that in with the breeze, just could look out through the open sliding glass door.
Paul needed lunch, so I encouraged him to go walk, that I didn’t think I was going to be doing anything, not at all, not for the rest of the day or night. After he left, that’s when the pain started ramping up. Then the diarrhea came. Hit me hard.
For the next twelve hours, maybe even fourteen, the pain only ramped up. I was shitting every few minutes, and by evening, it was like I’d been prepping for a colonoscopy. Almost clear, just water shooting out of me.
Paul had brought me Pepto and Tums and I was taking that stuff down every half hour. It was the pain, though. I’ve never, never in my life felt such excruciating twisting of my guts. This was not normal diarrhea cramps. No. Totally foreign, no relief or waning, just more and more gut churning, knot tying my intestines, burning agony.
Paul kept offering to take me home, but I couldn’t even move, let alone face hours of traffic. Not until about 2:00 a.m. did I know that we would not be checking out at eleven. That as soon as I could wake him and as soon as I could move, we’d drive back to Sac and straight to the Morse Ave. Kaiser emergency department.
I was scared. Scared that what was happening would never stop, that maybe I had an ulcer or Crohn’s disease. My tummy wasn’t tender in the appendix spot, but I knew that was a possibility. I moaned and rolled from fetal to straight to fetal to straight, getting up to poop, to shower, glugging the Pepto, chewing the tums, taking the Pepcid, no relief. I was too scared to go to the ER in Santa Cruz, worried we’d be stuck out of town.
I learned a lot.
We left at 6:00 a.m., and I really just wanted Paul to go home, not stay at the ER with me. He capitulated. I checked in there at about 8:30.
By then, though I was miserable, the pain had subsided substantially. In fact, by the time we got to the car back in Sanat Cruz, while I could barely stand up and my head and body ached to hell, I was no longer pooping (nothing left). I was totally dehydrated, clearly, and my stomach was still burning, just not that so severe writhing pain it had been.
That ER, wow, it is a basement ER, totally understaffed and crowded. Every healthcare person I encountered would first go, “Whoa, is that some sort of Raynaud’s?” They were very good to me—they saw me, attempted to give me comfort, but the ER is what it is. So much waiting, so much discomfort. If I had gone when I should have, during the peak of this beast of a flu, I’m sure I would have gotten a room faster. As it was, I had to play the waiting game, just like my fellow unfortunate ER visitors. Poor Diane, the elder woman who arrived close to when I did, and so many others, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Each time they did get me comfortable, after so much waiting, it was time for my next move, next test. The doctor (yes, he was gorgeous) was concerned because of my Raynaud’s (it’s striking and he was not wrong to worry) that I could be prone to anything and everything. I appreciate that.
Bloodwork first, then “we’ll have you wait in the internal waiting room.” The room was about the size of my bedroom, approximately 11X12, stuffed with people, all of us relegated to stiff chairs.
Ordinarily, I would have made at least one friend, not intentionally, but it just happens. This woman (not Diane, we never spoke, but I caught her name from all the announcing), she was so kind, very cool, and she wanted to chat.
I learned that her daughter lived across the street from her, lucky because she could take her dogs out while she waited (she was there because her ankles had swelled and she was concerned it was another blood clot). She had a way of not being annoying, even though she talked to both her daughter and granddaughter on speaker phone.
When they took her out for a little while, coming back in she said, “I’m gonna sit with my friend.” Before that, we had made eye contact, swapped smiles, she loved my hair and had some sweet things to say about that (always the best coming from a Black woman, gotta say). I was so bad off, I couldn’t even ask her name or encourage more conversation. I knew she got it.
When she left again, a high school age looking kid of about 6 feet, a big guy, sat next to me. He looked as miserable as I did. Poor guy. He had a football player’s body and the sweetest face, sad, his head hanging as soon as he sat. Soon after, his mom and little brother came in and sat along the wall across from us. Immediately, they took out their phones and soon both were shaped like a C, heads deep in whatever their screens were selling. The boy by my side began to lightly snore. It hurt too much to look around, so I curled up against the wall. When he asked his mom if she had a charger and she said no, I told him I did, so I plugged in and handed it to him. The gratitude wafted over. What a sweetie.
I had to get out of there because my back, my legs, everything was aching and cramping up. My stomach and head and all that were now in a holding pattern, still bad but nothing like I’d been.
I had a CT scan of my abdomen (the eye of my storm) and a request for a stool sample, which I had no way of honoring at this point. It took hours, but, finally, they had a room for me. Only ten minutes prior, they found a recliner for me (my feet were flaring and I finally spoke up about a half-hour before that got me in the chair—one lesson, speak up about needing a recliner right away). After like ten minutes of finally being in a more comfortable position, it was time for me to go to my room. I was so relieved, of course, for that.
Once I got the room and they began the IV fluids and a dose of dilauded, my doctor came in to report that everything looked normal.
The relief I’d felt getting onto that hospital bed was so much, just so much. I hate being in the hospital. Hate it. I just finished reading Lena Dunham’s Famesick, and I felt such camaraderie with her in so many ways. We have lots of differences, of course, and one of those was that for her going to the hospital was a source of pain management for her chronic illness. I’ve been in the most extreme torturous pain, the level I felt in my abdomen at the peak of this flu (yes, it was some flu virus, not food borne), in my hands and feet too many times to count. That pain, when it’s at a 10, like my flu pain at its height, can go on for hours and hours. Never, though, have I opted for the ER.
Now, though, I realize, if you go when you are at the height of it, they might see you faster. Maybe some of you readers know, have had experiences that have given you insight about that. I’m now understanding that to really know when to go, you’ve got to have so much experience and wisdom.
Back in 1995, when I ended up hospitalized with double pneumonia and a collapsed lung, all that led to thoracic surgery (yes, major major life altering almost dying surgery), I was out of town when the pain started, in Oakland. I just had to get to get to Sacramento before I could die. I had that same instinct in Santa Cruz, have to get to Sacramento before…
If I’m ever in this situation again, I’m going. At the peak, writhing in intolerable, gut splitting pain, I’m going to the ER, no matter where the fuck I am.
Paul was able to pick me up at about 3:00 PM on Wednesday. I was still miserable, but more like a normal bad flu, weak and hurting. The dilauded must have been a small dose. I barely felt it after the initial rush.
I haven’t had the flu in like a zillion years. And I’ve never ever had this flu. Never felt that way before, that kind of pain, even how I smelled was foreign. By Sunday, I was able to eat without pain or gastrointestinal issues, and I can not express how grateful I am to have my body back. Most of it. I lost some, so now I’ve got to get that back and fast, not let that linger. I’m already working on it.
Right now, we’re doing Paul’s birthday part deux. We’re at Dillon Beach (I’m writing this on Monday, June 22nd), camping in the cool ocean air. Paul loves it here. It is beautiful, and we got lucky, barely any wind today. He made me be as lazy as possible, doing all the things I would normally do with him (set up, clean up, etc.).
Hopefully, some day, we can redo the Dream Inn, but only as planned, all fun and freedom and no shitting the bed! (Happened when it all started. Luckily, it was just a little and we got fresh sheets quickly. Sorry but I couldn’t think of any other way to end that last sentence and I’d even forgotten about that unauthorized evacuation until just now. Oversharing is what you get with me, you know that by now).
I really didn’t say enough here about how supportive Paul was and continues to be through all this. It’s a given but my gratitude is endless and must be shouted out to the world: Thank you, My Love! My very best hospital husband (a “hospital husband” is the partner who you want for life, for the good, the bad, and the gross, regardless of gender or legal marital status).
Be well, everyone.
Want more of Eve’s writing and Paul Imagine’s drawings? You can get my book: Body in Script, available at many online retailers.
You can find it at my publisher’s bookstore, or other places, like Amazon. Or, chat with me here. If you’re local, come get one from me personally. I would love that! You can also find my book at Time Tested Books and at Flower Fist Market
