Oh God! Urp! Oh God! Make it stop!

It's been a rough couple of days for The Runner, boys and girls. A dose of viral gastroenteritis went through my family like a prairie grass fire. Just when I thought the angel of pestilence would pass me by unscathed, I started feeling queasy late Tuesday night.

"No problem," I thought. "I'll just pop a couple of gravol anti-nauseants, pass out in bed, and I should be able to sleep through the worst of it."

Yeah, right. I woke up around 1am to the realization that I was not going to sleep through this. The next four hours or so were spent with me dragging myself to the bathroom at 15 minute intervals, sitting on the crapper and cradling a bucket in my arms, simultaneously projectile vomiting and hershey squirting. Then staggering back to bed, sweating profusely and shaking. Soooo c-c-c-c-cold. Those four hours of hell made me realize that just when you think you couldn't possibly throw up anymore...you can.

The dehydration brought on by this was no picnic either. After a certain point, my kidneys started to ache. I started to wonder just how much dehydration needed to take place before your kidneys shut down. The only thing that stopped me from going to the hospital, was I didn't think I could make it from the house to the Emergency room without having another bout of the trots. Walking into the Hospital after just having crapped myself would have been one indignity too many for that night.

Luckily, sometime after 5am exhaustion overcame me, I slipped into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness and slept for about 2 hours. After that, I started drinking tiny doses of gatorade to restore my fluid and electrolyte levels. Against my better judgement, I started drinking more and more of it. Around 11am I was sick one final time and brought up about a jug's worth of gatorade. I have to say though, in the grand scheme of things, gatorade is one of the easier substances to throw up. It doesn't burn on the way up, and there are no messy chunks. After finishing, I actually thought, "Well, that wasn't so bad."

The rest of yesterday was spent lying on the couch and consuming fluids. Today, I ramped it up a little and had some chicken broth. Yes, I know what you're thinking. You're a wild man, RR. Out of curiosity, I decided to weigh myself, figuring I probably lost a couple of pounds from this. I looked down at the reading on the scale and thought, "That can't be right." I tried another scale in the house and received the exact same reading. I dropped ten pounds in the last two days. Jebus, that can't be good. Kids, listen to me when I say, don't try this at home.