There are few common illnesses worse to catch when you’re a child—and frankly, as an adult—than the stomach virus, aka The Tummy Tornado. Sure, colds and flus are annoying, but there are a variety of remedies available to alleviate your symptoms. Strep throat is another doozy, but with the right medication, you’ll be feeling better in a few days. I won’t add chicken pox to the list thanks to the introduction of the varicella vaccine in 1995. You Gen Z kids sure are lucky.
Even now (many years later), I can still vividly remember coming down with the stomach virus when I was eleven. Having also been stricken with a bout of e. coli food poisoning in my late twenties, I can confirm that—unscientifically speaking—intestinally related illnesses are amongst the most horrible germs in existence.
But there are life lessons to be learned from unpleasant experiences, particularly from a transitory illness like the stomach bug. The biggest one I learned: it’s ok not to be ok. Being able to surrender when you feel unwell—no matter how tough you are—is part of what gives your body the fuel to get itself back on track.
Here’s my story…
Picture of health
I’ll start off by telling you that I hate being sick. Yes, I know this doesn’t make me any different from the rest of humanity. But I truly believe that my distaste for illness is greater than the majority of the population. I despise the disruption to my routine. I loathe being limited in what I can do. And as I learned from catching the stomach virus, I really, really, really, can’t stand the uncertainty of when your body behaves unpredictably.
My default reaction to any malady is a refusal to accept that I am unwell. I don’t want my body to think it can just slack off. In addition to the mental side of my sickness denial, I also reject physical things that remind me of being sick.
When I was a kid, other than when sleeping in my bed, I never used a blanket. I could’ve been freezing cold, stranded on the top of a snow cap in the Arctic. No blanket for me, thank you. Using a blanket during waking hours was what you did if you were sick. (As a middle-aged, perennially cold woman, I now recognize that this logic is highly unsound.) My “no blanket” idiosyncrasy was quite imprudent given that my parents kept our house at a brisk seventy degrees throughout the winter.
I also hated chicken soup—or any soup other than tomato soup. Soup also reminded me of being sick. Too bad, because chicken soup is allegedly one of the best natural remedies for almost any malady.
Thanks to my sickness denial, if I didn’t admit that I was sick, my body would have to begrudgingly revert back to its healthy state. Strangely, this approach kind of worked, though it helped that I wasn’t sick very often.
My sickness denial was swiftly disproven when I came down with the stomach virus.
Bugging out
I have several distinct memories from the day the stomach virus first hit me.
At school, I believe it was my classmate T, who traded whatever healthy snack I had for his unhealthy snack. In this case, T had a fruit roll-up. (You may recall T from an earlier blog about snack trading. He sure hooked me up with some crappy foods.)
Now for those of you who don’t know, fruit roll-ups are a uniquely 1980s snack made from corn syrup with “fruit”-inspired flavoring. As its name implies, the fruit pieces are rolled up and stretched onto a piece of cellophane so that the roll doesn’t stick together. Genius, right?
As tantalizing as fruit roll-ups were to young Steph, they were also quite annoying to eat.
Even the smallest bite of a fruit roll-up was guaranteed to get stuck in your molars. The fruit roll-up would then remain wedged in your back teeth and along your gums until you had no other option but to scrape the fruit roll-up globs out with your finger.
But a trade is a trade, and I’m sure I enjoyed the fruit roll-up that day. That is until I got home from school.
Barf strogonoff
Unlike most days, instead of having my usual after-school snack—typically a second lunch since our lunch period was oddly at ten forty-five am—I lay down on the couch. But no blanket, of course!
My stomach felt a little off. I blamed my nausea on the fruit roll-up. I reasoned that the influx of artificial flavors must have been too much for my body to process. After all, my mother was nutritionally minded years before clean eating had even become a thing. We rarely had junk food, and if we did, it was the least bad of all the junk food options (pretzels, anyone?)
I didn’t feel great when dinner time rolled around. But thanks to my sickness denial, I didn’t want to admit I might be sick. So, I gamely downed that evening’s fare: beef stroganoff, something my mother rarely made—if ever.
For those of you who are unaware of this culinary delight, noodles, beef stroganoff is traditional dish of Russian origin typically served on a bed of wide fettucine. It contains sautéed pieces of beef in a savory sauce of mustard, mushrooms, and sour cream. (Though I bet my mom’s rich sauce likely contained a can of slightly watered-down cream of mushroom soup). It’s a real stick-to-your-ribs kind of meal on a cold night.
Sadly, I probably still had the fruit roll-ups stuck to my ribs.
I knew before I’d even eaten a single bite of my mom’s gourmet meal that the beef stroganoff was not going to go down well.
A few hours later, I was proven correct.
Oh sheets
It was the middle of winter, yet my parents—who I’m sure had their reasons—avoided turning the heat up higher than “icicle” level. I guess that’s why I had flannel sheets that night.
If you’re a flannel sheet lover, g-d bless you. I hate flannel sheets. For one, flannel sheets are incredibly staticky. So much so that I nearly electrocuted myself each morning when I turned on my bedroom light. Even worse—especially in the context of this stomach virus story—flannel sheets are incredibly hard to move around in.
Flannel sheets are the bedding equivalent of a Venus fly trap. Once you’re in, you can’t get out.
My workaround for flannel sheet confinement was to create an escape hatch by kicking out the sheets along one side of my bed. But the moment I realized that I was going to be sick, I was stuck. Literally. As in, I couldn’t get out of bed.
I had no choice but to turn over and orally “expel” the beef stroganoff, the fruit roll-up, and whatever else I’d eaten that day.
Back to the salt mines
Now, I’ll spare you all the gory details of the days that followed (you’re welcome). Instead, I’ll summarize how I felt: freakin’ awful. The bathroom became my second bedroom for several days. Not so coincidentally, my sister also came down with the stomach virus. My poor mother must’ve done triple the amount of laundry that week trying to keep our house sterile and disinfected. Well, more than our already hospital-grade level of cleanliness.
I’ll admit that while in the throes of illness, I gave up on sickness denial. Feeling weak and tired, I lay on the couch watching bad daytime television—begrudgingly covered with a blanket. I broke down and had a small bowl of chicken soup, but I’m sure I requested saltines. (The saltines brought the soup’s sodium level to “just barely salted.” I’m sure my incredibly low blood pressure today is partially due to my mother’s notorious under-salting of foods throughout my childhood.)
All in all, it took me about five days to fully recover. It was a horribly long time, particularly for a child. But, there was nothing I could do but wait for the stomach bug to pass. The worst part about being sick is there’s no joy in being “lazy.”
When you don’t feel well, things that are normally relaxing—like reading a book or watching endless hours of TV—isn’t all that pleasurable.
By day four, I may have actually wanted to practice piano. But only a little.
Way to be
For those five long days, my regular, normally active childhood existence was on hold. My sickness denial had been…well, denied.
I didn’t have the energy to do any schoolwork. I wasn’t hungry so I skipped meals (a rarity for schedule-oriented me). All I could do was wait until the sickness passed. I had to surrender my sickness denial and just “be.”
When I had finally recovered, it felt like a new person.
I enjoyed the flavors of food, particularly since meals finally stayed in my body. I sat on the couch blanket-free, back to being cold again. And after missing a week of school, I had plenty of motivation to get my world back in order (as much as an eleven-year-old’s life needs reordering).
From my experience having the stomach virus, I learned that no one is immune from getting sick. Sickness is inevitable, no matter how much sickness denial you may have.
While I will always try to “power through” when faced with illness, I’ve gotten slightly better about being OK with not being OK. It was a valuable lesson to learn, especially once I became a parent. Children’s lives have a funny way of disrupting your precious schedule.
These days, when my kids get sick, I still try to cover them with a blanket and promptly serve them chicken soup. (Do as I say, not as I do, right?)
But thanks to the stomach virus, there’s one thing I will never, ever do: consume another fruit roll-up.
Do you recall any childhood memories that had a strong impact on you later in life? Please share your stories with me in the comments section.
