Bugging Out
On vomiting, pride, and coming to terms with my humanity after the stomach bug ate through my family.
There are few things I’ve really boasted about in my life. They are, in no particular order, my ability to pinpoint (most) non-Pacific-island countries on a map. My mid-range passing accuracy with a soccer ball. My Indian accent. My Scottish accent. The time senior year of high school that Mrs. Merkowski called me—not Jeremy, my best friend, and our eventual valedictorian—the most erudite of writers in front of our entire English class. And the fact that I had not thrown up since March 22, 2004.
For over a decade, I clung to this streak like a child to their record for holding their breath longest underwater. Not throwing up, like smacking a golf ball farthest at a driving range or winning a belching contest, is a feat for which there is no trophy. The astonishment and adulation of your male brethren, their oohs and ahhs and Nice bros, is your only reward.
But in the immortal words of the poet Robert Frost: just as dawn goes down to day, nothing gold can stay. And my streak broke early the morning of January 1, 2016, at Jairo’s old house in Fountain City. He had invited me and a group of friends over to welcome the new year with cheese and wine. No dinner. We capped the night off with bottles of cheap champagne. At 5 a.m., I emerged from underneath the Frozen blanket his wife had covered me in the night before (after I’d passed out on their sunroom couch) and raced to the bathroom. Out came a bubbling red sea of regurgitated dairy.
I amended the streak that afternoon while lying on the couch eating toasted bread, sipping yellow Gatorade, and trying not to move an inch. I did the same the next year—the culprit, this time, greasy fried chicken and rum with Mickey in Santo Domingo—and in 2018 when I showed up groggy at Patty’s house on Deadrick Ave the morning after my bachelor party, an hour before the start of the World Cup Final. I had not thrown up, due to non-alcohol-related illness, for 14 years.
I boasted about my impenetrable immune system at bonfires and over beers with friends. The foundation of my boasting was not the non-act of barfing, which I had already succumbed to. It was the control. If I vomited, I told them, it was only because I bypassed my own security system and opened the door to the thief, not because they’d snuck their way inside my bedroom in the night.
Last February, however, the veneer of control came hurtling to the ground.
Only a week before, Haley had told me of how the Swansons had been wiped out by the stomach bug. It was like telling somebody about a break-in next door or a fender-bender and saying, “Oh gosh, that’s terrible,” then quickly moving on to the next subject never believing it could actually happen to you. For years, I feared no evil, registered no threat.
Days after the Swansons had fallen, I was writhing in agony on the bathroom floor pleading for God’s healing touch over my intestines. I texted Haley my final wishes for my funeral. I shared the Google docs with all my writing for her to disperse to the children. The love poems she could reread while she laid in bed a widow. At that moment, I wondered: if we could stop the entire world for a year and mobilize billions of dollars to fight the coronavirus, why had no one tackled the stomach bug yet? Did the government not employ the parents of small children? Had virologists been neuralyzed—wiped of their memories of being hunched over their toilets spewing chunks of hamburger patty from their guts?
With the trauma of last February still at the forefront of my memory, I entered this winter season acknowledging my vulnerability. From the first rainy December afternoon when the temperature didn’t rise above 40, I moved in fear and trepidation. I knew the bandit would appear, and that I’d be helpless to stop him. But I knew neither the day nor the hour. So I prayed to God that he’d equip me with faith to endure the test.
It arrived the second week of January.
We had already overcome both the flu and strep throat by that point. And I’d held firm the longest, the illnesses bouncing off me quickest or penetrating shallowest as they downed my wife and children. Then Leviathan descended, relentlessly, tearing through my body, leaving me empty and nauseous for 56 hours.
The reason I’m telling you this is neither to be graphic nor sensational. Because I’m certain you’ve also endured the blitzkrieg. That, whether through your own moral failings or disease, you’ve all been bent over a toilet bowl and can picture the shape and color and feel the ferocity of your last encounter with the devil.
I’m writing this because of the promises I’ve made and rarely kept in the midst of these battles. The vows to never again drink brown liquor or eat raw seafood or greasy fried chicken. “Oh Lord, if you could just…I swear I’ll be a good boy forever.” And then, once the haze lifts, I’m washing sausage biscuits down with Malibu rum and Coca-Cola.
Two weeks ago, as I ate from a box of saltine crackers and took tiny sips of water, I told myself that, if I could prevent it, I’d never hurl again. I would build up a foundation of good health like sandbags to keep back the flood. Why not be satisfied with peanut butter toast? Or turkey bacon over pork? Why Google whether Diet Coke or Coke Zero has more nutritional value if I could eschew both and just drink filtered water?
But I’ve always tended toward amnesia. And it doesn’t just apply to illness. It vetoes nearly every plan or proposal I put together to become a better person.
Every Sunday morning after I leave Redeemer, I feel so light. So ready to go out into the world and be a more patient father and a more intentional husband. To shift my focus from growing my platform and increasing my salary to growing my kindness and increasing my generosity. To complain less and be grateful more. To hope and not despair. Give and not take. Pray and not scroll. Yet by the time, hours later, the kids wake up screaming from their naps, the cracks begin to surface. By Monday morning, when I’m combing through emails and figuring out how to tackle a new week of projects and classes, requests and disruptions, my hopefulness is replaced by stress and anxiety. I’m back over the toilet bowl.
Just like I wish there were a vaccine for the stomach flu, I wish there were a secret formula for gratitude. A Midwestern sensibility between the coasts of pride and desolation. A powder I could mix into my oatmeal every morning that would make me neither take so much pleasure in pointless streaks or accomplishments nor live in absolute anxiety of getting sick, hurt, or fired.
To know there will be good days and bad days. And that, no matter how much I love fall, winter is coming. But it will lift, eventually, and make way for spring.
I sometimes feel like Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo carving into my prison cell the days since I’d been free. Except I don’t just count the days since I last vomited or saw the sun. I go in reverse too: keeping a tally of how many days I’ve opened my Bible before scrolling on my phone, gone to the gym, eaten vegetables, or brought an issue to my boss directly instead of texting about it behind their backs. I’ve taken turns flogging and patting myself on the shoulder.
My recent illness climaxed with a headache I couldn’t shake for half a day. Whenever I have these very bad headaches, I imagine slicing open my skull and scooping out the section where the pain resides like scooping ice cream out of a tub (this visualization provides no relief). It was caffeine withdrawal, I’m sure of now. My body is accustomed to two cups of caffeinated coffee every morning and at least one other in the afternoon. But for two days I’d avoided it, knowing it’d only go right through me. And, in the midst of that pain, I told myself I would no longer be dependent on anything. That I’d wean myself off caffeine so that, next winter, I do not cap the stomach bug off with another migraine.
Of course, I haven’t done that, as I sit here writing with a cup of coffee at my side. Because I am a hypocrite. And maybe that’s the lesson I’ve been trying to absorb: the hypocrisy of human nature. Of my nature. I’m amazed, at times, by the dependencies and contradictions we justify so that we don’t have to go through the brutal process of self-discipline. Caffeine over heroin. Big Macs over alcohol. In these moments, we become like the obese preacher railing against the soullessness of America while flying in a private jet to preach in poor countries whose people we’d never vote to let across our borders.
There was a banner I saw in a grade school classroom once: Awareness is key. I think that’s a good lesson to teach our children (even if it isn’t the key to unlocking every door in front of us). I’m certainly trying to be more aware, of my words as much as my actions. Of who I surround myself with. Of what I put into my body. And knowing that things in my life may go well just as they may go wrong. That I will succeed just as I will screw up. That I will string together streaks of feats just like I will crumble, hunched over a toilet, texting Haley not to come inside because I’ve crapped my pants.
She’ll screenshot that and send it to her friends (which is something I know she did). And I’ll laugh, knowing that, like time, it all passes. I’ll tell myself to not get so wrapped up in the troubles of today that I lose hope for tomorrow. Not to hope so deeply for tomorrow that I forgot it isn’t guaranteed. And that I make every effort, even when I’m literally empty, or literally covered in excrement, to lift my head up, find the handle, and flush.
Enjoy my writing? Consider tipping a small sum toward a new toilet.