So, I got up and ate a half carton of blueberry yogurt. Sat in front of the television watching political shows until I could not stand seeing Rick Santorum's face one more time. Got up. Called my sister since I was supposed to go over for a visit that afternoon.
We agreed that I should come right away. My headache seemed to be abating and I had the HAHAHAHAHA feeling that I get when I fool the migraine monster. I went over to Patrice's home and we visited. I had iced tea and she set out a bowl of those crackers that are Ritz on one side and pretzel on the other. I ate a few, but my stomach felt a bit queasy, so I backed off.
I stayed for about an hour and then felt the headache coming back, so said my goodbyes.
I was almost halfway home when the migraine decided to hit me full force. Now, if you've never had a migraine, it is kind of hard to explain. If you have had one, you know exactly what I'm talking about, Willis.
Pain came stabbing out of my left eye and all around it so painfully that I literally gasped. My eye immediately began to water profusely. The pain settled into one small, horribly throbbing place at the corner of my left eye. It throbbed in time to my heart beat. My stomach lurched. The bright sunlight was killing me.
I kept driving, albeit a wee bit over the speed limit. Okay, that is a dirty falsehood. I put the pedal to the metal. I knew it was a race to get home before I spewed the contents of my stomach.
I was about two blocks from home when that feeling came. That feeling that I was going to throw up in ten seconds or less. I pulled into a church's parking lot, mercifully empty, and went to open my door. The lock jammed.
GOD DAMN IT, BING. I TOLD YOU I WANTED A NEW CAR MONTHS AGO. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!!
I grabbed the towel that Bing keeps in the glove compartment to check the oil.
Threw up into it. And all over my chest, the steering wheel, my cupped hands holding the oil rag and on an innocent pair of gloves just sitting on the front seat, minding their own business, totally clueless as to why they deserved this fate.
The smell came back to hit my nostrils, which did not help my queasy stomach or throbbing head. Pretzels, Ritz crackers, blueberry yogurt and water. The sight of vomit made my stomach lurch and I weakly threw up a little more before it stopped.
Oh, shit. Fuck. Now, not only did I stink, but I had a big mess to clean up. And it would be ALL MINE since I sort of pride myself on turning Bing on, not off. I didn't want her or Liv near this.
I parked crookedly in the garage (Sorry, Bing!) and wrestled the car door open. Of course, now that I wasn't ready to throw up in ten seconds, it opened nicely with little trouble. I staggered out, carefully holding up my red sweatshirt, exposing my bra and not caring. When I got into the house, I headed straight for the kitchen sink where I unrolled my sweatshirt and threw the oil rag in. Then I gingerly pulled it over my head, careful not to get vomit in my HAIR. Once off, I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed again. I could still smell this sickening mix of pretzels and blueberry yogurt, though.
Socks came scampering into the kitchen.
"What smells so divine?"
Bing walked into the kitchen, holding her hand over her nose.
"What the FUCK is that SMELL?"
I briefly told her about the migraine and admitted sheepishly that I had a car to clean.
Bing is not good with vomit. When Liv had her first bout with the stomach flu, I went into the bathroom to find her holding Liv's hair back as she vomited while she turned her own face away, silently gagging. When Liv was all done and I helped her back to her room, I could hear Bing throwing up in the bathroom. Just the sight and smell had made her blow chunks.
She literally cringed when I told her that I had to clean the car.
She took a deep breath.
"Honey, you have a migraine. Um...I'll clean it up. You get in bed."
I could have kissed her for that, but I hadn't brushed my teeth yet and I am quite sure it would have sent her over the edge.
No, I told her. I was okay to clean this up. Just. Leave. Me. Alone. I. Can. Do. It.
She hesitated. Was I sure? I said yes. She reached into the sink for my sweatshirt and the oil rag with her index finger and thumb. Was there anything else to be put in the washer? I said no, grateful to her for taking care of that at least.
And then, I swished water in my mouth and filled a bucket with hot water and Pine Sol and headed out to the garage to clean the car, my head pounding so hard that I worried that I would get sick again. Socks somehow got out the door when I opened it and when I opened the car door, he tried to leap in.
Why on earth do dogs love horrible smells? The two things that attract that dog more than anything are vomit and other dog's shit.
I weakly called for Liv to please come get the
She did, looking a little green around the gills. She's almost as bad as Bing when it comes to vomit. She could never be in the medical profession. Med school is so full of awful smells that the only way you learn to deal with it is to breathe through your mouth at all times.
The car got cleaned. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. Most of it had um...gushed on the rag and the front of my sweatshirt.
I went inside, yanked off every single article of clothing and got into the shower where I stood and let the steamy hot water pound into me as my head pounded in rhythm. I had taken a swig of mouthwash before I got in and swished it all over and then spit it out and stood under the cascade of water with my mouth open wide to get that awful taste out of my mouth.
And then I went to bed and slept for the rest of the day into Monday morning, missing the Academy Awards, which I had been looking forward to so much. And my new crush, Jean Dujardin won too. Shit. Missed his beautiful smile. Oh, well. I had a date with a migraine and it doesn't care what I plan.
Now, you might ask yourself why I
One reason: A few of you seem to think that not only do I have a magical marriage, but that my visage is always chic and ever so lovely.
No sirree bob. No way.
I throw up just like everyone else and it smells just like everyone's too.
My life is not a sitcom where Bing and I dance around the living room every night, caressing each other's cheek and nuzzling happily. And I don't mince prettily around in heels and Chanel suits.
Sometimes, I upchuck into oil rags.
And by the way, there is still a trace of vomit smell in the car. That and a big Pine Sol smell.
My life is not magical and I am not Jennifer Anniston.
So...now we all need to bond. How about some good vomit stories? Any takers? C'mon. Be brave.
Well, unless you're Jennifer....
26 comments:
I am like Bing and Liv when it comes to vomit. I do not cope well at all. Fortunately, I am not much of a puker and, so far, neither are either of my kids. (Totally knocking on wood as I type this!) I'm such a wimp about puke that I don't even have any good puke stories. Sorry about that...glad you're feeling better!
i love a good puke story! my most recent and hopefully my last upchuck story involved food poisoning, tequila and my exes ENTIRE FAMILY. I have an iron stomach...usually...until this night...when the tequila mixed with a mild bout of salmonella nearly killed. me. i was chatting happily one minute and the next i was ralphing all down the front of my shirt. anyone who was anyone in that family was there, watching me gag and dry heave. i finally staggered to the bathroom where my ex found (an hour later) sagging over the john. I'm not sure which the worse the poisoning/hangover i felt the next day or the sheer embarrassment of puking in front of twenty scrutinizing people. such fun!
I get migraines, too, which include a light show. They are horrible. I do sympathize.
I am normally resistant to vomiting because I hate it so much, but when I was 11 I was sleeping at my friend's house, sharing her bed, when I suddenly vomited w/o warming. I woke her up to tell her I was sick, she said, "Don't wake up my parents" and went back to sleep. Her dad heard me vomiting again in the bathroom and drove me home at 5 am but I was not allowed to wake my parents on Sunday mornings so I stayed on the front stoop, vomiting for hours, until my mother woke up, called the doctor, and my appendix was removed the next day. It had already burst.
Sorry you were sick. Migraines and toothaches are horrible. When are you going to get a new car or take it and get that door fixed?
Not Safe.
I've thrown up in the car trying to make it in to work a few times. Luckily, I have enough bags and crap around to use usually.
Migraines are torture Maria. I sympathize with you on the whole eyeball throbbing, thinking your gonna die, loosing your lunch deal. You pretty much just described my life as well before I went on a bunch of drugs to stop most of that nonsense. Hope you feel better!
When I was in 2nd grade, I was at school, walking down the hallway to my class (along with a ton of other kids), and out of nowhere, puked. I didn't feel sick or anything - I just turned my head and puked. I had to go to the nurse's office and lay on the damn medical table that was cold, and have an itchy wool blanket on me while they tried to reach my mom. It turned out I was sick, but it just came on like gangbusters.
In high school, I drank so much one night that I puked in my friend's car, but actually made most of it into a bag. Still- I wasn't even THAT drunk, so it was confusing - I wasn't a puker. The next day, her mom asked who ate all the spaghetti in the fridge. I had, because, duh - ya gotta eat before you drink (not that I gave that bit of info to her mom). Turns out that spaghetti had been in there for 2 weeks. Ugh.
Sorry about your day. Especially missing your beloved winning his Oscar! My vomit story involves going out with co-workers (one of whom I had a crush on) drinking copious amounts of alcohol, eating tortiere and vomitting just inside the exit door of the commuter train on the way home. I almost lasted long enough to get out at the next stop, but, as you know, vomit respects neither time nor location.
1993...11th grade. I decided to be "cool" and participate with the boys in a drinking game before a Rush concert and promptly blacked out after downing an insane amount of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill (really?). When I came to, I was in a cleaning supply closet at the venue, staring at a pail full of my own vomit and sobbing into the giant chest of a very kind, concerned employee.
There were about 20 strangers standing outside waiting to see if I was ok when I emerged, covered in yuck and smelling of double yuck.
I won that fucking drinking game, though.
I had moved to a foreign country where I didn't know much of anyone (I can schmooze like nobody's business when I need to, but naturally, I am a total introvert), and I *finally* met a nice girl who asked me out on a day, and very shyly suggested I come over so she could cook for me. I was skating pretty close to broke at the time, to the point where I couldn't afford to waste *any* of the groceries I bought. So, earlier that week, I'd made a chili that was supposed to be lunches and dinners for a good few days. I wasn't going to let an unexpected warm spell of weather change my plans! I had that chili for lunch, before going over to that lovely girl's house for dinner....BIG mistake. I started to feel a little woozy on the walk over, and figured that I must just be hungry, and convinced myself of it pretty thoroughly as I arrived, chatted with my date, sipped VERY gingerly at a glass of wine, and helped her cook. As we sat down to eat, suddenly things got a whole lot worse. I tried to brazen through (another mistake), which left me in the so-charming position of eating two bites of my date's cooking and then very abruptly jumping up, tearing down the hall to the bathroom, and loudly retching up every bit of food in my stomach...allow me to reiterate: after eating two bites of her cooking. ::headdesk::
i was seriously tempted to crawl out of the bathroom window, i was so mortified. fortunately, aoife was v. nice about it, nursed me the rest of the night, and even had the courtesy to not mock me ceaselessly until we'd been dating for three or four months.
Ugh, you poor thing! There's nothing worse than vomiting for me. I hate nausea and actually having to vomit is completely horrible to me. I'm also not well at dealing with it. I can't clean dog vomit or else I'll be the one hurling next.
My worst vomit story? Is a doozy. In 2005, I worked in Egypt on a dig. They have all kinds of bugs there that our western bodies aren't used to. And I think I caught pretty much all of them. A lot of my colleagues got ill too, but I was by far the worst off. Back then, my autoimmune diseases weren't diagnosed yet, so in retrospect it makes sense. ANYHOO! Egyptologists have this inside joke about the Curse of the Pharaoh, which is basically that the real curse is when you get ill and basically everything inside you liquifies, you get a fever, cramps, the runs and intense nausea with lots of vomiting. I got that a lot, but one night was worse than any other. I was nauseous and cramping. It started with vomiting. Then it got worse. I couldn't stop throwing up. Also, this was a bathroom shared by five people and even in the throes of vomiting, I kept thinking how incredibly embarassing this was. And then... I was bent over the toilet, throwing up... and I pooped my PJ pants. All control, gone. So I took my pants off and tried to get the worst out of them in the shower because I couldn't walk the few meters to the washing machine and even if I hadn't been so weak, I couldn't risk leaving the bathroom because I was still emptying myself every 30 seconds. So now the shower (which had virtually no water pressure) was yucky and stinky. Then of course I had to throw up again and this time, because I was pantsless, the diarrhea coming out the other end went all over the tiled floor. I ended up having to clean the entire bathroom with only a trickle of water to work with, exhausted beyond belief, embarassed like I'd never been before (and never have been since), with a fever and still cramping and nauseous. To this day, I'm not sure how I actually managed. All I know is the night "ended" when I had nothing left to throw up and I was sitting on the toilet, my PJ pants waiting in the shower for me to regain the strength to go wash them properly. And then one of my coworkers walked in. She was the Dig Princess, as I used to call her. Always picture perfect, always knew everything. She walked in and saw me, as white as the wall, in a crumpled heap sitting on the toilet without pants on. And I was too far gone to care. I don't remember what she said, if she offered help or not, nothing of the sort. Somehow I ended up in my room. The next day, it turned out that I had pretty much kept the whole komplex awake with my violent upchucking and pooping and whimpering. They told me it had gone on for hours. I had no idea. That was, physically, the worst night I ever had. Nowadays, I still get nauseous and crampy easily, but I always measure it against that night and then I feel better, because it never even comes close to coming close. Also, I can't believe I just told you all of this. But there ya go.
Febreeze really does work in cars. (You don't need to know the rest of the story).
I have cleaned up a friend's vomit with not too many towels when she hit the floor instead of the loo (she had fainted after this). I have mercifully found the loo every time I needed to hurl. Your account was so descriptive, I swear I could smell the Pine Sol. ;) And I'm glad you're not Jennifer....cannot stand her!!
N is the pucker in our house. Usually due to alcohol of course...actually it's ALWAYS been due to alcohol. Im the puke cleaner of the house, dog and people puke. The secret is to breath through your nose. I teach special Ed so this has come in extremely handy. I don't have any personal stories but I've got some good classroom stories...
I'm a puker of epic proportions. I vomited multiple times a day the first 6 (you read that right, SIX) months of both of my pregnancies. I had to brush my teeth in the shower because the feel of the bristles made me vomit. I learned to keep a can of ginger ale by the side of the bed and drink as much as I could before I got up. No, it didn't settle my stomach, but it was easy on the replay. I remember several times when I had to have my husband pull over on the side of the road so I could hurl. It got to be almost commonplace. Conveniently, my body gives me definite warnings that are ALWAYS right, so I can prepare. I have about 5-10 minutes from the first symptom. If I wait until the saliva starts to flow, I'm in trouble - it's 60 seconds or less from then.
I toyed with bulimia, too. Eat what you want, drink a big glass of warm water, wait 10 minutes and put your fingers down your throat and up it all comes. This was before I was pregnant and got my fill of purging. Oh, any my now-husband told me that if I threw up one more expensive dinner, he'd walk out of my life. He meant it and I believed him. It was a long time before eating a full meal didn't trigger the urge to purge.
Not terribly proud to admit this, but I've also vomited just to make room when I'm consuming copious amounts of keg beer.
I puked continuously during my pregnancies. Not just during the first 3 months like most women, but for the entire 9 months. I think I have vomited around my entire city: grocery stores, malls, parks. I did manage to escape the car puking though...
And, I also wanted to mention that my 11 year old son gets migraines. We find that we have to give him tylenol or advil right away, at the VERY first sign of headache. None of the waiting around to see if it will go away on its own. When started medicating early, it made all the difference.
Oh, pobresita! I hope you're much better now. You will NEVER hear a vomit story from me; I AM Jennifer Anniston... well, maybe not, but still.
Oh man do I hate to puke! I agree with Jean, though, that some things are better than others on the 'replay'...
My worst was when I was probably 21 or 22. Not much experience as a drinker, but plenty of enthusiasm! I went out with friends to a super crowded bar/restaurant. One of the guys in the party decide to buy a round of Kamikaze's. He demonstrated the technique used to drink this loathsome beverage - just chuck it down your throat in one big swallow. I did that. Chucked it down and then chucked it right back up. Splat! All over the floor.
I have never seen a crowded section of a bar clear so quickly. I ran to the restroom to finish puking and heaving. Went home shortly thereafter. UGH!
Thanks to all who sent me ideas on how to treat migraines. I don't think there is anything that I haven't tried. The problem is that I am already on lots of other drugs for my rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes and meneire's syndrome and all of the meds for migraines can't be taken with them. So..I have two options: 1) catch it right away and take the one med for migraines that I CAN take (and if I don't take it before the pain sets in, forget it, doesn't work) and 2) Lay in a dark, chilly room in complete silence. For 12 to 24 hours. The pain usually begins abating at hour 17.
My Da had migraines, and his Da. Two of my sisters also get them, so we are old hats at dealing with it.
Still sucks the big one, though, when one hits.
I was invited to dinner with Queen Elizabeth II, not by myself of course but to accompany my boss, a Senator at a gala dinner at parliament house. I had shopped and bought a beautiful outfit to wear. About an hour before the dinner my migraine hit. I was staying in a hostel with no bathroom but a kitchen sink in the room. I vomited into that sink until there was nothing left but I was still so sick and weak that I had to miss the dinner. So I guess I know how you feel about missing Jean's smile :)
I rarely throw up. I can count on both hands the number of times I've hurled. My fav was throwing banana up all over my first husband's face and chest immediately after he kissed me. Turned out I was pregnant.
ooh I get migraines too, horrid horrid things they are. Thankfully I rarely throw up with mine, though sometimes I think it might be better if I did.
I had a spate of upchucking recently until I figured out it was the Tramadol the hospital were giving me. I loathe being sick, so was glad to have worked that out!!
OMG!!!! ANNA WINS THE PRIZE... What a story, poor baby.
Being a Flight Attendant for 42 yrs, I was pretty good at helping eveyone with their vomit.
And always being on the road, I got a lot of food poisoning at restaurants, so I'd end up in my hotel room sitting on the pot all night with explosive diareah & either bending over to the tub barfing my guts out or holding a waste basket in my lap to throw up into at the same time.
I always carry empty plastic bags from the grocery store in my purse, car, everywhere just in case . The thing is - vomiting was always easy to deal with on the plane, at least there was a bag or two to barf in... But IF you got the RUNS then you gotta stand in line for the fucking lav for a toilet to empty your bowels into. Always a nightmare .
Oh and forget about the damn migraines... Once a pilot let me take oxygen in the cockpit for 15 minutes, & it really retracted back into just a mild headache & I was able to continue working.
I never dealt with throw up too much til' I had kids and I have been known to catch it in my hands. Ewww...right?
I swear, I am not saying this in a mean way, but Anna's story just made me laugh to the point of crying real tears. I know it's awful for her, but somehow I found it hysterical. Totally needed that, Anna. Thanks! :)
Two stories. The first involves tossing my cookies in my car too. I was driving down the road one day and just felt the need to empty my stomach. I stopped on the shoulder of the road and couldn't get the door open fast enough so I puked into the small trash can I have. It's tiny though so some of it got on the seat, my shirt, etc. Fun times.
The second story is much worse. It was when I had food poisoning and threw up for 9 hours straight. 9 hours!! I'm surprised I didn't die. TMI warning...I was sitting on the toilet with diarrhea and puking into the bathtub. I kept the shower running to wash out the puke because the smell of it wasn't helping the situation.
I would never admit this if I couldn't do it anonymously, but I threw up once while giving my ex-husband a blow job. You should not give BJs so soon after eating dinner, that is all I am saying.
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