TIFU by thinking I could “power through” Norovirus and instead became a human Slip ‘N Slide

As the text states this is about the time Norovirus tried to wipe out our entire household in under an hour. It started with our daughter getting sick first; she was so tiny and dehydrated we had to rush her to the ER for fluids. While we’re sitting there watching her slowly come back to life with an IV, my husband and I kept glancing at each other with that quiet, unspoken panic like, “Do you feel okay?” which of course was immediately followed by both of us trying to gaslight ourselves into believing it was just sympathy nausea. Totally fine. We’re fine. This is fine.

But then, in what I now recognize as the dumbest moment of overconfidence in our marriage, we decided to ask the ER doctor if they could maybe give us a little something too just, you know, in case we started feeling bad. I said it as casually as possible, like I was asking for ketchup packets. The doctor LAUGHED. Like, actually laughed. Not a polite chuckle, but a full “Haha no” like we’d asked for shots of Fireball to go. So we took our daughter and left, still trying to pretend we weren’t both already starting to descend into gastrointestinal hell.

We got to the car, and while I buckled our little biohazard angel into her car seat my husband got into the driver’s seat, gripped the wheel, and just… froze. I asked him if he was okay, and he muttered something like, “Yeah, yeah I’m fine,” with the wide-eyed expression of a man who was absolutely not fine. Then, without warning, he leaned out of the open door and VIOLENTLY erupted onto the ER parking lot pavement. Like full-body heaving, soul-leaving-the-body levels of vomit. It wasn’t cute. It wasn’t discreet. It was The Exorcist, except in front of God, security cameras, and probably a couple of nurses on their smoke break.

When it was over, he wiped his mouth, stared straight ahead with dead eyes, and said with the grave seriousness of a man who’s accepted his fate, “We’re going home.” So now he’s driving us the three minutes home like a war veteran returning from the front lines, windows down, hands gripping the wheel, the car thick with tension and the faint smell of Gatorade and regret, while I sat there next to him clutching the diaper bag and silently praying my own stomach wouldn’t betray me before we made it back.

We got home. I threw our tiny agent of chaos into her crib like a football and heard my husband immediately disappear into the downstairs bathroom where he started making noises so horrific I’m convinced they permanently damaged our pipes. Meanwhile, upstairs, I started to feel the telltale rumblings in my stomach and in my infinite wisdom, I thought a hot shower might fix it because water cures everything, right? Spoiler: it absolutely did not. I quickly became a human Slip ‘N Slide of regret, slipping between the toilet and shower in a loop of agony, crying, sweating, and praying for the sweet release of death while my body attempted to evacuate itself from every available orifice.

At some point, my husband the pale, sweaty, and barely upright shell of a man he was, crawled upstairs like a zombie from The Walking Dead and peeked into the bathroom to check on me. I tried to say, “I’m okay,” but instead my body betrayed me completely and I unleashed a cinematic wave of projectile vomit in the shower like I was auditioning for The Exorcist reboot. In that moment, I knew we were both done for.

In a last act of desperation, I grabbed my phone with trembling, vomit-streaked hands and posted in my neighborhood Facebook group asking if anyone, anyone at all, had nausea meds they could spare before this house officially became a CDC case study. Bless one angel of a neighbor, who replied immediately with, “I have some zofran I’ll hang it on the doorknob for you!” So I somehow dragged myself to her house like a feral raccoon, puked in her yard (I’m so sorry if you find this I couldn’t exactly leave a note), grabbed the meds, and drove back home. I threw a pack at my husband like I was passing him a live grenade in an action movie, took one for myself, and then collapsed naked and wet in the shower like a sad, forgotten rotisserie chicken.

The moral of the story? If your kid ever gets Norovirus, don’t even try to be strong. Just burn your house down, fake your death, and start over.

TL;DR Baby got Norovirus and took us both out. Husband puked in the ER parking lot, I tried to shower it off and became a human Slip ‘N Slide, neighbor saved us with nausea meds I retrieved mid-puke.