Monday, June 22, 2009

Green Martians and endless miles of I-95

I've never cared much for green-skinned Martians, probably because I have frequently turned green myself with stomach flu. I hate throwing up worse than almost anything. Anyway, we had journeyed down to see my family, a 600-mile trip. My husband did all the driving in those days and I was taking care of our infant daughter.

We started out the trip home with me feeling woozy, but we weren't 100 miles into it that I started vomiting. Then, regular as clockwork, I vomited every 20 minutes. My husband was afraid to pull over and stop at a motel because he just wanted to get us all home. At that time, the baby was nursing, and my husband refused to drive one wheel revolution without the kid being strapped into her carseat. So we stopped to throw up on the roadside. We stopped to go to the bathroom. We stopped to nurse every two and a half hours.

Oh, and this was back in the day when the maximum speed limit was 55, and you would get a ticket for going 61. I think it took us most of 24 hours to get home. I was so exhausted and the baby was light years past cranky too. I was never so glad to see my own bed.

We didn't take many long trips like that afterwards, not until the kids were a bit more self-sufficient. I still get vomiting jags, but nothing so terrible as that trip from hell.

5 comments:

Donna Caubarreaux said...

That does sound like the road trip from hell.

J L said...

Good Lord -- that's right up there with the time I was a trans-Atlantic flight and I had stomach flu, spending most of the trip in the bathroom! I used up most of a bottle of Pepto on that flight and another one during our week in England.

Maggie Toussaint said...

I actually had several road trips from hell in our repertoire to chose from. This one stood out the most in my mind, second only to the master blaster story. (Our toddler screamed for 3 hours straight in the car. No wanting to take her out of her car seat [i.e.stop the car], I'd checked her diaper repeatedly. Tried giving her a sippy cup. Tried singing and books. Nothing. ended up she'd had explosive diarhea up the back of her outfit and it was burning her back. Note to new moms - if a kid keeps screaming undress them all the way to make sure there's nothing like this.)

Thanks for this trip down memory lane, JL!

Maggie

Anonymous said...

I hope you've had better trips to balance this one, Maggie!

Unknown said...

MAGGIE--I don't think anyone could top that one. Two years ago I got food poisoning in the interior of Mexico--on one of our adventures down there. It's wasn't Montezuma's revenge--it was food poisoning, and 8 of us got it and we all remember exactly what caused it--no one else ate that particular thing. With food poisoning, you only throw up--over and over and over. For three days. fortunatley we were in one place during that time--if I'd had to get on a bus, it would have to go off and leave me--so I missed days out of that trip. watched a lot of TV in Spanish. The bad thing is--I rarely, almost never throw up--not even when I was pregnant. Cast-iron stomach.Celia