I had the joy of getting to spend the week with norovirus. For those of you who have had norovirus, you know what my week was like. For those of you who haven’t had norovirus, thank your lucky stars you don’t know what my week was like. You can Google norovirus, but the medical descriptions really don’t do it justice. I would describe norovirus as ” a virus in which your stomach goes through a full on exorcism every time anything remotely resembling food or liquid touches it.”

I spent most of the week in bed or laying on a couch praying to every ideation of God one can come up with that whatever had taken up residence inside my body would soon be evicted. It was the kind of sick that even watching Cynthia Enviro belt out “Defying Gravity” and watching reruns of my favorite Real Housewives episodes did nothing to make me feel better. That’s a whole new level of sick, people. I firmly believe the two above mentioned pop culture icons can cure just about anything that ails one, so the fact they weren’t even touching the sickness is saying something. When one is sick and miserable one has a lot of time on their hands to think and so below are the profound, prophetic, and incredibly wise musings I had thanks to Norovirus ( Feel free to copy and paste these to print out and hang on your refrigerator.. they are that life changing).

1. There has to be a better and easier way to lose weight than this
2. How is it possible that body aches can make one’s finger tips ache and hurt
3. The Righteous Gemstones on HBO Max might just be the most hilarious show on television right now (If you haven’t checked it out, do so!. Fair warning: It is incredibly irreverent).
4. Watching an intense medical show like “The Pitt” while severely nauseous is not a good idea.
5. Club crackers taste like flies mignon when you haven’t eaten much for days.
6. All nurses should be required to be funny and sarcastic.. it seriously makes the patient experience so much better.
7. All bathroom floor tile is cold if you’re laying on it.. doesn’t matter age of said floor, style, color, etc. Side note: Lying on a bathroom floor is a very humbling experience.
8. Zofran is a miracle drug.. literally straight manna from above.
9. I like people.. As an introverted extrovert I sometimes question this one, but after a week of not a lot of human interaction I can confidently say, I do like people.
10. There is such a thing as too much silence
11. Deep breathing while nauseous is not advised.
12. Not all puke bowls are created equal.. Yes this is a fact of life I didn’t need to find out, but now that I know, I know.
13. The triathlon side of TikTok is an interesting place to end up and had me inspired/convinced that I could train for a triathlon. It just looks like fun and the outfits are so freaking cute! Very realistic thoughts coming from the woman whose heart rate was up in the 150’s this week just walking up a flight of stairs and who gets dizzy throwing a load of laundry in. Yeah, I can obviously swim miles in open water, bike 60 some odd miles, and run a marathon one right after the other. No issues whatsoever.. they call them dreams for a reason. Also, I blame my fever for such delusional thoughts. Fevers and TikTok don’t mix.

While the above mentioned musings are all on the lighter side I did have one deep musing throughout the week and it went something like this “Thank God this isn’t my normal.” This musing happened repeatedly over the week and I had many moments were I felt profound gratitude for the fact that as challenging as life can be day to day for me at least it’s not laying around, having a fever, keeping no food and drink down, level of challenging. Most days I am able to leave my house, interact with the world, with my friends, etc and for that I am incredibly thankful. Leaving the house this morning for only the 2nd time since Tuesday night I felt like I was seeing the world through new eyes. The sun seemed brighter, the songs of the birds seemed to be happier, and I was so genuinely happy to be out and driving that even the drivers in Omaha couldn’t put a damper on my day. If you drive in Omaha, you know this is a profound statement because the drivers here are next level bad. The entire city should be required to take drivers ed every year as a refresher.

I was reminded this week as I have been many times on this journey, there is always something to be grateful for.. always.