I think one of the laziest, most life-sucking ways you can begin a written piece is by copying and pasting a definition of a word in order to avoid coming up with a creative introductory sentence of your own. This is why I have waited until my second sentence to tell you that MedicineNet.com defines norovirus as “an illness characterized by acute onset of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramping, and, in some cases, fever and malaise.” I think that by politely waiting until the second sentence to share that definition, it shows that a) chivalry is NOT dead, and b) this is the subject I have chosen to center this post around.
Two months ago I was acutely onsat by norovirus, and two months ago I said to myself, “One day this will be funny.” One day ended up being more like 60 days, as it took a lot of time to fully recover emotionally. But, as the Spider-Man movies have raised us, with great power comes great responsibility. Norovirus was a great power, and now I feel responsible, as a survivor, to share some of my experiences during this illness so you know what to expect when you’re expecting.
And remember, just have fun with it!!!!!!!!
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(originally written November 23, 2014. I was 19 and thriving.) About a month ago I attended an adult party with my parents that was buzzing with successful and beautiful couples. They were primarily middle-aged guests, and being on the brink of 20 made me the youngest and most unsuccessful attendee. Because of this, I knew I had to sophisticate myself so I could at least try to blend in. I painted my toenails for the event which only took a minute because since last May I’ve just been painting over the same chipped, old nail polish with more nail polish. I am resourceful and excellent with time management. I just copied and pasted that nail polish example into my résumé. (I’m 110% kidding. I haven’t even thought about starting a résumé.) Anyway, so my toenails were super painted and I only got out of the lines a little bit, so as far as I was concerned, I was ready. The night went pretty well for me, so for every young person attending a legitimate adult party, I have put together some helpful tips based on my experience.
Nailed it. Welcome to adulthood. I recently drove with my family to New Hampshire. My stomach was feeling a little curious right before takeoff, but I didn't want to cause any delay because life is short. As they say, love the life you live; love the life you live. The tanlines will fade but the memories will also fade. Forever young. Good vibes only. Namaste. So moral of the story is I decided to get in the car with my family and commit to a day on wheels. (Side note: I love wheels. I wish everything were on wheels. Mostly my dog, your dog, etc.) Anyway, negative two seconds into the trip, I realized I had entered A Situation. My insides were going crazy, but I wanted to buckle down (and buckle UP-- for the next million miles!!!) so I said nothing to my family and just let my insides happen. One hour into the trip, my mom noticed I was going through A Situation. I think it's because I was sweaty and almost dead. At this time I would like to make a plug for my newly formed all-girl band, Sweaty and Almost Dead™. Come see us play our first gig behind the local dumpsters tomorrow night at never o'clock, eastern standard time. I absolutely know I'm only one in 747,399,202 people that have gone through A Situation on the road, but for those that haven't and might one day, I have put together some advice for how to deal with an illness on wheels: 1. Scream a lot. 2. Don't worry about screaming. It could distract the driver, but hey, this is your day, too. Raise awareness. 3. When someone asks you what's wrong, say, "Nothing. I'm fine" over and over for at least 30 minutes to really stress your honesty. Eventually, alert the entire car that your stomach is hurting and you think you're having contractions. Remember, you're a classy broad (I'm looking at you, Meryl Streep), so break the news to them in a five-star way. I chose to rent the cast of "Full House" for the morning, and I had them deliver the news while Uncle Jesse riffed on the guitar in the background. It was so silly. Kimmy almost ruined everything again. If this kind of delivery sounds too over the top for you and you want to be more low-key, there is another way. I heard the cast of "Boy Meets World" is having a big summer sale, and you don't even have to pay separately for the strobe light. 4. When someone looks at your sweaty, green-tinted face and asks, "Do you need us to pull over somewhere?" just say, "No, I'm okay" over and over for at least an hour. Wait until the absolute last minute to give in. To entertain yourself in the moments before The Last Minute, think about building your résumé. I added some action words to mine like "good" and ":)." 5. When The Last Minute has arrived, scream. 6. Exit the highway and pull over at a suitable location. I ended up locking myself in a family bathroom at Target for half an hour. I chose the family bathroom because I could be completely alone in there, and also because I wanted to gain a possible sponsorship from all of the people that have "Family Over Everything" tattooed on their ribs. (I'm looking at you, Meryl Streep.) 7. If you've made it to the bathroom but you aren't sure what's going to happen to you, just sit on the floor and wait. While you wait, be productive. The sun has already set on your résumé, so do something else. I taught myself to speak a new language. Turns out I am a natural at most braille dialects. 8. The second you know what's happening with your body, scream. 9. Accept what you're about to go through. To quote Nike's popular slogan, just let it happen. 10. Post event, exit your vicinity of choice confidently. Smile and wave at your fans who were waiting for you to emerge. I stepped out of the Target family bathroom and waved at my mom, dad, brother, and the half-priced box fans on the shelves behind my family. 11. Everything's over now. You did it. Alert a nearby mayor and see what can be done. Crunch some numbers with him or her and see if their town has enough in their budget to put together a community barbecue in your name before you merge onto the highway again. 12. Get back in the car and continue your road trip with ¡caution! I ate fries and a bag of candy. I hope ye, future traveler, have found what I have learned on my situational journey to be helpful. Remember, there's only one true rule: have fun!!!!!!!!! You definitely won't, though. Sorry I yelled. Just give it about 24 hours, and then everything will go back to normal and be good and :). All of my similarities with my father sometimes cause me to jolt up out of my sleep in the middle of the night, one poignant question on my mind: am I a dad? No, I tell myself. You just look and act like one sometimes. Go back to sleep; we’ll talk about it in the morning. I think people must make judgements based on the most minimum, surface level features. Rarely does anyone ever tell me I look just like my dad, although we share the same pointed nose; the same short, slightly-stocky build; the same full face, built on top of an angled jawline only noticeable from the side; and the same walk (much to my mother’s, grandmother’s, and every eligible bachelor’s dismay.) We make the same jokes at the dinner table-- witty, yet not brilliant ones; we press our tongues to our upper lips when we’re deep in concentration; we listen to the same 80s pop and rock hits. Generally most are pretty quick to say I look just like my mom, which is totally reasonable, and what I consider to be a compliment. I get why they say it-- we have the same dirty-blonde hair that’s always dark at the roots, even after a fresh highlighting; the same denim-blue eyes encased in almond-shaped frames; the same olive-toned skin that’s just as quick to darken in the summer as it is slow to fade in the winter. “She’s definitely yours! Twins!” people have told us. However, unlike me, my mom has this innate ability to make things happen. This is why I come to her when “I need it on my desk by Monday.” (I say this phrase when I feel like something is an urgent matter. I also say it because I think it makes me sound like Corporate America. I’ve never been there, but I heard they have lots of suits and swivel chairs.) “I think I need an eye exam because my eyes seem kind of weird lately, but when I called, the eye place said they didn’t have any appointments available this week and obviously I’ll be at school next week so...,” I said at my mom. She was sitting at the desk in between our kitchen and living room, iPad resting on her lap, scrolling through her notifications. “What exactly did you say to them?” she asked, not looking up from her iPad. “I said, ‘Hi, this is Kayla Smith and I need an eye appointment this week’ and then they said they didn’t have any.” At this, she set her iPad down, crossed her legs, and turned to look at me. “I said like please and thank you and stuff, too,” I told her. “I’ll call after I finish this,” she said. She looked up at me again. “Brush your hair.” Not that I would have brushed my hair if I had had time, but I didn’t. Thanks to my mom's superpowers, I had an appointment and was off to the eye care building in a turnover rate that made Mia Thermopolis’s makeover from teenage commoner to Genovian princess seem an eternal affair. The building was small and rectangular, with a strong “shades of brown” interior design theme. The two opposing adjacent walls were filled with clear shelves, stocked with pairs of glasses neatly displayed for him and her. The reception desk was on the left wall, across from the section in the middle of the room where you sit down and choose your glasses and sign papers with the eye people. I made a beeline for the reception desk, where there were two women in matching purple scrubs, phones pressed to their ears. I chose to hover by the receptionist who was talking the loudest because loud talkers are confident and willing to take on challenges (I assume), and I needed someone who I knew could safely lead me through this battle. When she hung up the phone and gestured for me to come forward, I walked straight up to her (way too aggressively) and stubbed most of my toes on the bottom trim of the desk. “What’s up, babydoll?” she asked, taking off her glasses and letting them hang on the beaded lanyard around her neck. “First of all,” I said, “thank you for calling me ‘babydoll.’ I’ve never had a nickname before. Also, I just wanted to let you know I’m here.” Whenever I have to check in for any appointment, I always say “I just wanted to let you know I’m here” like I’m doing them a favor-- like I’m going out of my way to do what all humans are required to do upon arriving to their appointments. (I’ve just realized this self-antic now. From this day forward, I will check myself before I check myself in… and I’ll check myself before I end a sentence in a preposition because that almost just happened.) “Do you have your insurance card with you?” the receptionist asked. “I believe I do, yes.” I never just want to say a hard “yes” because what if I can’t find it? I unzipped my blue and white paisley Vera Bradley wallet that I got for my 15th birthday and have been too lazy and cheap to replace, even though it’s no longer my aesthetic, it’s covered in various stains, and the edges have been fraying since 2011. I rifled through my cards, hoping to find something that looked insurance-esque. I’m always insecure about this part of the check-in process because I don’t understand all of the changing insurance policies, and I know my parents tell me about them, but it all goes in one ear and out the other so unbelievably quickly. I ended up pulling out a white card with some black type on it. There was nothing about it that absolutely screamed “insurance” and there wasn’t an expiration date on it or anything either (there’s supposed to be, right?), but I decided to risk it and hand it to her. “Here you go,” I said. “This is my insurance card.” (The trick here is to sound cool, calm, and collected, even when question marks are filling your body from head to toe.) She took the card, scanned it, and said thank you. So it was the right card. Noted. I started walking over to one of the brown chairs, but didn’t even get a chance to sit down and not stretch my legs. “Kayla?” I looked up at the call of my name to see the tallest woman in the world/the room holding a clipboard and looking at me expectantly. She was the kind of tall that if she were to trip and fall at sunrise, she wouldn’t hit the ground until the last loop of the “Today Show” had aired. She was wearing a crisp, pale pink button-down shirt neatly tucked into steel grey slacks, and her rich brown hair was pulled back into a tight bun in what I think was an attempt to make her look older. She looked as if she had graduated college some time between 2013 and the last moon cycle. “I’m Dr. Tiffany,” she said, extending her hand. I shook it firmly, like I was closing a deal. Her shake was less firm, which was wild to me because she was the one wearing ironed business drab, but I suppose her mannerisms weren’t that farfetched for someone who follows the title “Doctor” with her first name. She led me to a small examination room in a little hallway off to the side of the main lobby. I sat down in the black leather chair with all the weird eye pieces attached to it, and Dr. Tiffany sat on a little rolling stool, which she scooted over to me. And so it began. We went through numerous tests, which I knocked out of the park except for the two letters I missed. I thought the “O” and the “G” were a zero and a “Q.” I got really down on myself about missing those, and Dr. Tiffany said, “It’s OK.. No one gets those last two.” And I said, “I thought you said they were ‘O’ and ‘G.’” And she didn’t laugh, and that’s why I switched to Dr. Karen after that visit. After that, Dr. Tiffany decided to dilate my pupils. I had to give her my consent to do this, which immediately made me think something crazy was going to happen. I ended up giving her my consent and my blessing because life is short and two is better than one and the tanlines will fade but the memories will last forever. “I’m just going to put a couple drops of this in each eye,” she said. The way she talked was like a meek, timid valley girl. Imagine Kim Kardashian’s tone of voice as she’s leaning over to ask Khloe what “superfluous” means in the middle of a serious intervention about Kanye’s behavior. “Now we just wait ten minutes for the solution to set in.” For the first few minutes, Dr. Tiffany asked me about my summer. When she was talking to me she didn’t scoot her stool back at all, so she remained two inches from my face while I told her that summer was good, and waitressing was decent. “Mm,” she said. “Yeah,” I said. I felt there was nothing left to be discussed, so I used the remainder of the time for my drops to set in to use the restroom, if only so I could escape the intimate proximity juxtaposed by meaningless small talk. As I was washing my hands at the bathroom sink, I looked up into the mirror and gasped at myself. My eyeballs were filled with giant black saucers. Who knew dilated pupils meant my pupils would be dilated? As I was staring at myself, my vision started to get blurry and I figured I should head back to the room to finish my tests with the doctor. I sat down in the black leather chair again and Dr. Tiffany went to town flipping various lenses in front of me and flashing multicolored lights in my eyes. It felt like a party without any music, snacks, or fun. “OK, I’m going to give you a low prescription,” Dr. Tiffany said after a while. “Like for glasses?” I asked her. Past me would have been elated because past me has always wanted glasses. You know how when you’re a kid and you want braces really badly because everyone has them and they’re cool, and then you get them and they become uncool the second you realize your teeth are going to be shackled by metal train tracks for years to come? I felt similar to that at this time. Sometimes we want what we don’t have until we have what we don’t want. “Yes, for daily use. You can pick out a pair in a few minutes after I finish writing up your notes,” she answered. What happened next was exactly what I expected to happen next: I got to pick out a pair of glasses because Dr. Tiffany finished writing up my notes. I was released into the lobby and directed towards the shelves stocked with glasses on the back walls. There was one major problem, though: I could barely see because my pupils were still dilated. Friends (Dr. Tiffany) don’t let friends (me) choose glasses when they can’t see an inch in front of their face. How was I supposed to pick out the perfect frames with my vision so compromised? WWSWD? (What would Stevie Wonder do?) It wasn’t long before a woman came over to help me. She was wearing the same purple scrubs as the receptionists along with white Crocs. Her name was Kate. Kate was sporting a blonde bob and clear adult braces. “Oh, you know what?” Kate said to me. “This is so silly. I guess you really are having a hard time seeing because you’ve been trying on men’s glasses.” “No, no. I’m here on purpose. My head is too big to fit into women’s frames,” I told her. “But it’s still not big enough to break the glass ceiling.” At that, Kate didn’t laugh. Her gaze just rose to my forehead, as if she were trying to measure the circumference of my skull. I walked away in a zigzag pattern so she couldn’t get a good read on me. Maybe I was too quick, or maybe she took her lunch break, or maybe it really was Maybelline, but when I turned around again, Kate was gone. I ended up picking out a pair of grey, sophisticated man glasses all by myself that I thought were decent enough. “Do these look OK?” I asked another woman in scrubs. “They look… OK,” she said. Her brow was furrowed, and she was holding her mouth similar to Katie Holmes’ on the red carpet-- one side of her mouth was attempting a small smile, and the other side wasn’t even trying. One half was going 90; the other was just going 10. “Well, that’s good enough for me,” I told Mona Lisa. “I’ll take them.” I paid for the frames at the reception desk, and was told to come back in a few days to pick them up when they were ready with the lenses. I walked out of the eye care building feeling triumphant and sensitive to the light. I went back to the eye care building a few days later to pick up my frames. A receptionist, wearing green polka-dotted scrubs this time, told me to try on my new glasses. My pupils weren’t dilated this time, and my vision was clear. That’s how I discovered I had clearly made a mistake in choosing my glasses. I could feel my own Mona Lisa mouth coming in. The glasses weren’t a cool grey; they were silver (and reflective enough to flag down Batman at 2 a.m.) They weren’t sophisticated; they were boxy and clunky. They should have come with warning that said “CAN’T PASS FOR UNISEX. AT ALL. EXTRA MASCULINE.” I put them on my face-- those OK frames that I had chosen so successfully--and looked into a little handheld mirror. I stared at myself, one poignant question on my mind: am I a dad? |