Lessons Learned from a Visit from a Norovirus
by Will Truman · May 12, 2014
- According to the Mayo Clinic, a norovirus is “highly contagious and commonly spread through food or water that is contaminated by fecal matter during preparation [and] through close contact with an infected person. Diarrhea, abdominal pain and vomiting typically begin 24 to 48 hours after exposure. Norovirus symptoms last one to three days, and most people recover completely without treatment. However, for some people — especially infants, older adults and people with underlying disease — vomiting and diarrhea can be severely dehydrating and require medical attention.”
- Sometimes, it’s best to abandon the 20/10-5-2-1-Minute Rule. The 20/20-5-2-1mr says that after putting the baby down for a nap, or while the baby is napping, I let her fuss for at least ten minutes (the twenty is for particular circumstances) before going in there and trying to fish her out. It’s not the “cry it out method” because, depending on what happens, 20 minutes drops to five, then two, then one. But always at least one minute. Turns out, if your baby has just vomited all over the crib and herself, she will scream in such a way that will warrant the immediate (and first ever) waiver of the 20/10-5-2-1.
- Plopping her in the bath after she vomits is probably not a bad idea, so long as you’re prepared for her to vomit in the tub. While you’re cursing yourself for the tub you will now have to clean, consider the lack of alternatives.
- It’s perfectly reasonable, after there have been two rounds of vomiting, to just let her hang on to your tight even if it means that she is likely to vomit on you. But if you do this, for god’s sake make sure you’re (a) not wearing a shirt you like at all, and (b) wear a friggin’ towel in between you.
- It’s helpful to be married to a physician. Once I told her what had happened, she wrapped up at work to come home and basically told me what to expect. A corollary being when she asks you six times if you’re sure there hasn’t been diarrhea, there will probably be diarrhea. Plus, she will know what things like “oral hydration solution” are.
- Cigarettes help with nausea, but ecigarettes don’t. At least, I don’t think they do. I only really started noticing the nausea when I got up to have a sandwich and realized the very thought of eating made me feel ill. Whenever I feel nauseous, cigarettes are my go-to for alleviation. But my system was sending off all sorts of warning bells about ecigarettes. And, come to think of it, I really hadn’t enjoyed my previous puffing session at all. I will say, it has been months since I missed cigarettes as much as I did this weekend. The recent statements by the CDC honchos and others saying that if I am vaping I might as well be smoking did start forming the framework for some serious rationalization of “Just until this is done.” Fortunately, I stood firm and avoided the one thing that I was certain would help.
- As your own condition deteriorates, admit that you’re getting sick. In what I guess is an overcompensation for my hypochondriatic youth, I tend to assume that when I feel bad and under the weather, that I am probably imagining things. But when I want to sit down and take a rest while in the shower, that should probably be consider that I might indeed be sick. As the “Oh, this is probably [something unrelated to the fact that our baby is sick as a dawg]” start stacking up, they’re called “symptoms.”
- The first motor vomit may actually help, but that’s mostly illusory. This happened around 3am. And optimistically I thought that after it did I might finally be able to sleep. My stomach felt better. or at all. No such luck.
- Diarrhea, when it’s the baby’s or your own, is really hard to control when it’s sufficiently vigorous. Don’t wear or dress your daughter in anything nice.
- At a point of no return, drinking more hydration solution will cause subsequent vomiting which will destroy you. Yet will not necessarily knock you out. It reminds me of that beast in Star Wars that ate Boba Fett that takes forever to digest you but leaves you alive throughout the process.
- The point at which to consider the ER is when you’re speaking in gibberish at 2 in the afternoon. You know how some people talk in their sleep? Saying words that aren’t actually words in any discernible language? That shouldn’t be happening in the daytime. If it takes great concentration to speak your native language, and so you’ll just talk to yourself in a language you don’t understand, well, you’re not thinking clearly.
- Emergency rooms are a place you go in case of emergencies. Most people know this, but I haven’t been to an ER since I was in grade school, I only knew about it in an academic fashion. I was raised in the sort of household where you don’t go to the ER unless your arm is falling off. Whatever it is can wait until business hours and the local clinic, was always our motto. (The two ER visits I had in grade school involved a thrown bat hitting me in the face, and a broken arm.) Anyway, Clancy suggested that we make an exception to the severed limb rule in this case. I wasn’t in a position to argue. If not for me, then for our daughter whose own condition was not improving and who had stopped drinking the hydration stuff.
- IV drips are like life in a bottle. Within an hour, I was feeling alive again. Still hurting, still sore, still nauseous. But I hadn’t even realized how bad it had gotten. I told her that I had the vague sense that I didn’t like the treatment I got at the ER, but when she asked questions I couldn’t answer them. There were some communication problems, but if that was only because they couldn’t speak gibberish then I could hardly blame them for that, until or unless giberish-translators become mandatory.
- Yay! Pee! A baby urinating in her diaper is not typically something you actively celebrate, until you’re looking for it as the first positive sign that the illness is abating. Heck, I was even happy to see my own pee start to come. But hers was magical.
- A good sleep is worth a million dollars. Everything got better really quickly after our visit, both for the baby and for me. The primary thing I wanted to do with my new life? Sleep. Clancy obliged (see last item), so I got a nap. Then I was up for a bit, but never completely up, but then had the best night sleep I have had in years. It was a sleep session for the ages, truly.
- Food is, evidently, unnecessary. At least, when you have it stored up like I do. I have had only a banana to eat in the last two days and I am perfectly content with that. I miss the ecigarettes more. Rather than dying to find something to eat, I am mostly strategizing how I can start eating again so that I don’t go back from zero to sixty.
- I have an amazing and awesome wife (and she has a great employer). On the latter score, her employer was very supportive throughout the entire ordeal. Coworkers were happy to fill in for her and do whatever it took to enable her to manage this crisis. And manage it she did. I wish the moral of the story was that, as the stay-at-home-dad I could have taken care of all of this myself, but even before I fell ill myself it would have been extremely difficult. Once I started sliding downhill… {shudder}. So far, the best I can offer her for Mother’s Day is that she herself {knock on wood} has not been infected.
Glad you are on the upswing.
Plenty of guys got off easy by going to work, even hard work, when they left the mom home with the kids. Its easy to forget how valuable and important really basic medical care can be. The simple stuff does wonders. Did anybody ever tell you that every day is Father’s Day and Mother’s Day for parents? Punching those people is just fine.Report
Dear Gods in Asgard Above this sounds awful. Glad you and Lain are on the mend.Report
God, sounds worse than Montazuma’s Revenge I got in the Yucatan.
UghReport
I’ve had it once, though happily much less powerfully than you have. The horrors! Your post brought them all back. Did you experience the post vominting euphoria? For me after that horrific retching when you finally stopped there was maybe ten-fifteen minutes of near bliss. I suspect it may have been a slamming-your-hand-in-the-door/ feels so good when you stop thing but it got so in the finally downramps to vominting you’d actually hope it happened soon so you could wallow in that brief window of bliss afterwards.Report
Me, the Bug, and the wife had that last winter. I got it about 24 hours after Bug, and the wife was about 8 hours behind me.
Not a fun time.Report
Been there.
A co-worker, who was prone to exaggeration, told me on his first day back that he’d never been as sick as he was, that he couldn’t imagine being as sick as he was. About 8 hours later, I was lying on the side of the road, face covered with dirt and vomit. I finally made it home, the day before my mother was going on a vacation. It hit her just as the plane took off, and she spent the whole flight to Tokyo in the bathroom. She said it worked out well, being able to sit down with a sink next to her. She got off the plane, slept in the hotel for 48 hours, then had a great vacation.Report
I’m glad you two are feeling better. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that your wife is in the clear.Report
You can understand why a cruise ship suffering from an outbreak of this is unto the ninth circle of hell.Report
It’s late to respond to this, but I also experienced this a few years ago. I think of it as “That time I could have died.”
I realized how lucky I was to have access to relatively simple health care technology (an IV of saline solution). I also realized how many people do die from things like vomiting and diarrhea.
Glad everything’s better for you and your baby, Will.Report