Gastro!!!

Aaah yes, the dreaded lurgy. Gastro, the thought of it sends shivers down your spine doesn't it! Obviously we've had a bout of it recently. As a great start to the weekend I was up from 2am Saturday morning with it....repeatedly. To top it off my husband snored peacefully away the whole time. Really I should have "accidentally" kicked/bumped him. Needless to say, I've spent the interim recovering. Miss 10 has been off school with gastro and in a karmic payback, hubby has had a very mild bout of it. It has just brought to mind some legendary episodes in my life. They are
1. Date night at the movies: picture this, Sicily 1912 (no, actually Melbourne 1992). We saw the Unforgiven. About 5 minutes before the movie ended I had that horrid watery mouth that comes before the old heave ho. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of the row and I knew I wouldn't make it to the toilet in time. Picturing myself staggering, vomiting up the aisle, I did what any reasonable human would do; lifted the lid off my empty soft drink cup and delicately vomited in that. Lid on, in bin on the way out, no dramas, except for needing a bucket all night.
2. The sickie. We had friends staying (from Melbourne) with us Xmas 1998 and for new year's eve we decided to have a bbq. Seeing as I was rostered lates (2:15 - 10:45pm) despite a request to the contrary, yet again, I foolishly decided to ring in sick. As we were getting ready for the bbq I ate a woolies/coles salad. Yes... By 3:30pm I was feeling windy. By 4pm I had cramps. By 6pm I had vomited. By 8pm with the sound of other people enjoying themselves, I was stationed on the loo with a bucket in my hands. Oh, happy days. At 11:30pm (gotta admire my persistence/sheer bloody mindedness) I resurfaced and nursed a single drink miserably for about 2 hours and then just gave up and went back to bed. Still felt seedy when I called in the next day to an unbelieving manager. She changed her tune the following day when I turned up still fairly pale. Ha!
3. The cascade effect. One day (2005) I was at work when I started feeling rather sickly. My boss just happened to walk by about an hour before finishing time and I abruptly said I was going home. She took one look at me and wisely moved out my way. In those days I had a long (about 1 hr) drive back and forth to work. I roared in the driveway and basically ran into the house into the toilet to projectile vomit. I stayed in their and in my room until the next day. Fortunately hubby was home, so he got the kids ready for school, daycare, tafe etc. About 10am he got a call off miss 23 (then 17) to pick her up from tafe, as she'd tried to get a bus home feeling sick and had vomited behind the bus stop (almost funny). He put misses 10 and 7 (then 5 and 1) in the car and drove off to get her. On the way there miss 1 vomited all over herself and had to be taken home screaming and covered in vomit with miss 17 & 5. Miss 5 spewed on the lounge room carpet when they got back, miss 17 went to bed and miss 1 had to be cleaned up. Master 20 (then 14) came home from school and stumbled into the toilet to, you guessed it....wee. No, vomit of course. So there were buckets, vomit bowls and towels all around. Then hubby collapsed onto the couch. "Oh, I don't feel too well" he stated to the room in general and wondered why I looked at him in horror. So, of course, he too started vomiting, loudly, explosively, constantly. It went on for so long that at one awful stage he  started twitching and became non responsive to my increasing attempts at stimulous (bugger the sternal rub, I would have happily bludgeoned him just for some sort of response). I briefly considered calling an ambulance. All in all another happy day.
Happily, this one doesn't seem to be that bad, but I bet I'm not the only one with legendary stories of gastro am I???