I Will Survive

   Diary of a Madwoman with a persistent intestinal virus -- a warning that this may be too much information for some folks.
      Just imagine it is 3:00 am in the morning and for the second night in a row, I am considering making a permanent bed on the bathroom floor. And this is coming after I was a good girl today, I followed all the rules (well almost all of them): 1) no caffeine, okay so relatively no caffeine, I mean only one cup of half-caff so that really and truly does not count, and this is from a woman who has to have at least two cups of the real deal in order for her brain waves to function properly. And while I am telling the truth, I had only one Diet Coke all day which, I might add, was consumed over an incredibly long period of time. So long, in fact, that it totally lost that icy cold slight burn you get when you throw back the first gulp. (As an aside, I have been known to put my partially consumed Diet Coke cans back in the freezer to preserve and re-create that burn over and over again.) 2) I ate small portions of carbohydrates for lunch and carbohydrates for dinner. Okay, the lunch carbohydrate was sweeter than is probably recommended for those with a stomach virus but the dinner choice was a very small baked potato. Boring. How safe can you get? And no, I did not slather it with butter or sour cream. I put salt and pepper on it and one teaspoon of fake butter spread. So why am I on the floor for another night praying for my husband to wake up and alternately hoping that he does not since I hate the fact that even after thirty-six years of marriage and vows that include the words better or worse, sickness and in health, I detest the fact that he has to see me in this state. Beauty and modesty are not even in the picture. But since I can clearly hear his muffled snores rising and falling in the bedroom, I know it's gonna just be me and the floor.
   I can't stop shivering. I am so cold that I am actually seriously considering covering myself up with the bathroom rugs. And just so you won't be totally grossed out, I washed them day before yesterday, but they are STILL bathroom rugs. I am getting more and more desperate when I finally realize (duh) that a cabinet full of towels is less than a foot away. Ahhh. So I pull out five or six of these beauties,

fold one up as a pillow and drape my supine body with the rest. I have tried getting back in the bed on several occasions, but the foot race in the dark to the bathroom coupled with dealing with not making it in time are routines I don't want to repeat. I am periodically taking sips of water to keep myself from becoming dehydrated (having raised four children along with having a husband who had Crohn's Disease, I know all the right things to do) when I start to drift off to Never Never Land where I am dreaming of bottles of candy pink Pepto Bismal and Immodium.
    The light is finally peeking through the windows when I realize that enough time has elapsed for me to safely crawl back into bed. As I slide in beside my husband he pats my leg and asks me if I am okay. What can I say, "No, I spent the night on the floor yet again? And you slept through it all..." I pat him back and whisper that I will live. He rolls over and begins to snore again.
   But when I open my eyes and the clock says 8:15 am, I know two things: 1) I really will live and number 2) He must have heard something at some point because he has gotten dressed QUIETLY (this is quite an accomplishment for a man who walks through a room like a bull in a china shop), tiptoed around the room and left me sleeping without saying a word. Now that's love in my book and worth a night or two on the bathroom floor. What was it that Flannery O'Connor said? A good man is hard to find.