‘Be Careful What You Wish For’ — A Cautionary Tale from Laura Daniels

Here's my cautionary tale of the phrase "Be careful what you wish for".  I would've rather have spent the end of my St. Patrick's Day weekend with you and THOUSANDS of other Western New Yorkers, enjoying the parade. Unfortunately, that wasn't in the cards for me this year.

Instead, I was enjoying the comforts of my boyfriend's bathroom.  Instead of corned beef and cabbage, this was my St. Paddy's day diet.

I was jolted out of bed around 3am Sunday by stabbing stomach pains and an overwhelming feeling of nausea, and the paralyzing fear of "OMG, I'm gonna throw up."  (I HATE throwing up.  HATE it.)

For the next 20 hours, I was up and down every 10 minutes.  I'll spare you the gory details...but lets just say it's not exactly the condition I wanted to have my guy to see me in for any extended period of time.

It was double-trouble for him too, as his 11 year old daughter woke up sick in her downstairs bedroom around 9am, with the same issues.  So I commandeered the upstairs bed/bath, she ruled the downstairs. Poor Mark manned Clorox-duty the entire day.

Here's where the "careful what you wish for" thing comes in.

Earlier LAST week, my best friend, Maria's, home was hit with this bug.  All were feeling better by Friday, so Mark, his 2 kids and I went over for dinner.  I joked (as I always do) that I was envious of the inevitable weight-loss of having the stomach bug.  Granted, it's not a pleasant way to go about it, but it's a sick, sadistic thought I had.

There were more minuses than pluses for sure.  After a BRUTAL 24-hours plus, I was indeed down a couple pounds.  But I also lost PTO time, felt INCREDIBLY guilty that both of Mark's kids got sick, and got ZERO exercise or nutrition for 2 days.  However, I did get to see my man in action, and he was amazing. In between disinfecting both bathrooms, SEVERAL times, he also brought DJ from my house to his (I couldn't get out of bed), he got "the patients" Gatorade and ginger ale, and didn't once tell me how bad I look in green.

BTW, thanks for all the "hope you feel better" tweets and such...and to those of you who say "there's no such thing as a 24 hour bug", my weekend begs to differ. There IS no such thing as a 24 hour FLU, as in INFLUENZA.  But stomach viruses can rush IN and back out in hours.