When Manly Germs Attack!

We've reached another milestone over here at Lainey's Life Lessons.  This week, I got to nurse my honey through an illness for the first time.  After almost nine months of living together, his seemingly perpetual good health had a little hiccup.  No, he didn't get a vicious case of the hiccups.  Hiccups would have been easier to deal with than what he had.  My honey was laid low by a stomach virus.


My honey suffers from migraines from time to time.  I've seen him have to take the day off work and stay home for these a number of times since we started living together.  When he gets a migraine, he stays in bed all day and sleeps a lot.  So, I thought I knew what my honey would be like when he was sick. 
 I was wrong!  Very wrong.


We had gone over to my mother's house for Sunday dinner.  She had made her world famous pork barbecue and we had a great time having lunch, hanging out with my brother's family, and just generally relaxing.  Squirt, my nephew, was really hyper and dragged me off to play with him while my honey and brother watched the Ravens game on T.V.  Funnily enough, Squirt wanted to play football, which in his five year old mind means sack the quarterback.  He gives you the ball and then tackles you.  I was starting to feel like Joe Flacco after all the hits I took from a very energetic Squirt.

Eventually, I had to cry uncle and asked my nephew to play something different.  He chose to turn on the TV and watch some cartoons.  The whirling dervish FINALLY settled down.  I texted my honey from upstairs and asked how the game was going.  He relayed updates from the game and then asked if we were going to stay at my mom's or head home for the BIG GAME. Did I mention I'm a Redskins fan?  Since I had a sneaking suspicion my nephew wouldn't let me watch too much of the game at my mom's, I opted for an early departure from mom's house.

We were putting coats on and getting ready to go when my honey excused himself to the restroom.  He was in there for quite a while, but eventually emerged looking pale and unhappy.  He told me he had an upset stomach and I hustled him home to the comfort of his own bathroom.  He disappeared upstairs as soon as we got home, which was just as the game was about to start.

He was suffering from a manly tummy ache.

I'm not going to lie.  I was torn on where I should be for a few minutes.  The game was going on our big, beautiful HD television downstairs and my honey was feeling miserable upstairs.  After the first series and Redskins touchdown, I went up to check on my wounded warrior.


My poor sick honey!

He was watching the game on the teeny, tiny non-HD TV in our bedroom in between trips to the lavatory.  He was pale and sweaty, but wasn't running a fever.  I offered to make him some tea and he was good with that.  Then I settled in to watch the big game with my baby on the smallest TV in the house.

Side Note:  I hated the idea of my honey's big screen moving in when he did.  I didn't see any reason why we needed to take up a big chunk of a living room wall with some monstrously large TV.  BUT, now that I've gotten used to watching it all the time, the other TVs in the house just seem small and the picture doesn't seem as clear without the high definition.

Just don't tell him I said that.  Okay?

What I wanted the big game to be.

What the big game actually was.

After the first half, he looked exhausted and ready to sleep and I was itching to get back downstairs to watch my team's quickly deteriorating game.  He encouraged me to go downstairs by saying he wasn't going to be any fun to hang out with for the rest of the evening and would probably just sleep.  So, reluctantly I went downstairs to watch the rest of the game.  Alright, so it wasn't reluctantly.  It was enthusiastically.  Cut a girl some slack!  It was the first time the Skins had made the playoffs in a long time!

Just call me the naughty nurse!

 Unfortunately, my honey didn't sleep.  He came trudging downstairs within thirty minutes to get himself a refill of his hot tea.  I instantly felt like the worst fiancee in the whole world.  He was upstairs in all kinds of gastric distress and I was downstairs, ignoring him, because I wanted to watch my game.  If he had pulled a stunt like that when I was sick I'd probably have had a fit.  Since my honey needed me (and the game was over before it was over, so to speak), I played nurse for a while and did a few laps up and down the stairs getting him tea and toast to soothe his aching belly.





I kept him stocked up on Pepto Bismal, hot tea with honey, and toast for the rest of the night and hoped he's be alright in the morning.  Alas, the next day, he was still hurting and didn't make it out of bed, much less to work.  I had to leave him home sick with a massive supply of tea bags, bread to make toast, and head off to work myself.  He looked a little better when I got home, but he cancelled our dinner plans with his parents.  My honey passing up an opportunity to eat his mom's home cooking is never a good sign.

My honey didn't want anything to eat for dinner and urged me to go over to my mom's for dinner.  I opted to call one of my bridesmaids, instead.  We were gone for about an hour and I stopped on my way back to get my honey some soup from Panera.  I returned home just in time for the BCS National Championship Game where my honey's Fighting Irish were preparing to take on Alabama's Crimson Tide.

Yes, he looked like an angry Coach Kelly.

Something funny happens to my honey when his team isn't doing well in a game.  He gets really angry and yells at the TV.  Well, apparently when his team isn't doing well and he's sick, he reaches an all-new level of bad behavior.  My honey got so mad during the game that he threw his phone across the room!  He later, much later, assured me that it was just the case for his phone that was thrown and not the actual phone.  After his rant, he was feeling tired and his stomach was hurting again, so he toddled off to bed. 


He stayed home again the next day as he didn't get any sleep that night because he said the soup I'd brought him upset his tummy again.  By this point, the nursemaid routine was getting a little old.  In two and a half days, my honey went through two bears full of honey, countless tea bags, and all the bread in the house.  He'd had a sports related temper tantrum and I was about ready to tell him to "man up".  Thankfully, by the time I got home Tuesday night, my honey was showered, dressed, and looking (and acting) almost human.  Hooray!  We survived our first bout of illness.

 Here are Lainey's tips for what to do when someone's sick:

 Here's my advice to my honey for the next time he gets sick:

The only thing that would make this meme more awesome would be if it's creator had been able to spell "awesome".