Oh, this poor boy, Ollie. What a week he had last week. He had some kind of GI virus from hell that just went on, and on, and on.

This is the virus that never ends! It just goes on and on my friends!

He first started feeling sick Monday afternoon, but we didn’t think too much of it. However, Sara and I had just fallen asleep Monday night when we were awakened to blood-curdling screams. I mean, absolutely terrifying, up-and-out-of-bed-and-into-the-hall-before-I’m-awake-oh-my-god-my-kid’s-dying kind of screaming. My first thought was just that he was having a bad dream, but Sara said later she thought maybe he had fallen out of bed with his leg caught in the side and broken it. It was that kind of screaming.

It turns out, it wasn’t either of those things; it was just his reaction to waking up covered in vomit. I couldn’t blame him. “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I’d do in that situation,” I confessed to Sara later.

It was a rough, rough night. Aside from one 3 hour stretch, he was up about once every 45 minutes. Considering we had to strip the bed and clean him up most of those times, we’d usually just be falling back asleep when he’d need us again. Despite the fact that we managed to come up with 4 mattress pads, we ended up starting laundry at about 2 a.m., when we realized we weren’t going to make it through the night.

Tuesday he was sick all day, not even able to keep water down. A sip of tea only lasted about 90 seconds in there before being violently rejected. Needless to say, Tuesday night didn’t go well either. Wednesday he felt sick, but he slept soundly through the night, which was much appreciated by everybody. By Thursday he was eating some regular food and we thought we were finally out of the woods, until we hit nighttime. Another really bad night, with multiple bed changes.

Friday was okay again, and Friday night was fine, so once again we thought we were through the woods. Maybe Thursday night was just a little hiccup? Nope, here comes Saturday night, and he was back to his old tricks again. By that point, he was nearing in on a full week of being violently ill.

We have done a *lot* of laundry in the past week.

The good news is, nobody else caught it, which seems like a minor miracle. I’m a little confused why it seemed to come and go, only showing up every other night. The thing is, it’s so hard to know what’s going on with him. It’s that old, easy-going attitude again. He never tells you when he feels sick, and he generally maintains his good mood. So it’s entirely possible he felt absolutely awful the whole time, but just didn’t show it. That would be very much like him.

I don’t think he even really understood what was going on. He would feel sick to his stomach and then one second after it passed it was like he thought it was over for good, and he’d never feel like that again. Rinse and repeat, every 30 seconds or so.

This was particularly true when it came to eating. I think he might have recovered faster if he could have just gone easy on his stomach, but he wouldn’t. He just couldn’t help himself. As the week wore on he got hungrier and hungrier, and he didn’t appreciate us preventing him from eating whatever he wanted. He would get physically violent at the mere suggestion that he take it easy and sip some water, or restrict himself to only 3 pancakes. Even while he was gagging when someone even talked about food, he had to list all the things he was demanding we give him to eat.

By Sunday he hardly had the energy to stand, and would just sort of lay on the floor in various rooms. I felt pretty bad for the poor boy. I can only imagine how being that sick for that long would affect me, and I’m an adult who can understand what’s going on.

A week is a long time to be sick. I’m so glad he’s finally feeling better and we can get back to a more normal routine (and sleep schedule!)