I woke up to a series of texts from one of my 20-something offspring letting me know that they had started vomiting in the middle of the night. By the time I woke up, the acute period had ended and they were sleeping in the bedroom next door. I hadn’t heard a thing all night. Thank goodness we were in a rented apartment and not a hotel room, so everyone had a bit more elbow room.
(Not going to lie, I love no longer having to physically help small children who are throwing up. That said, back in the day I once caught toddler vomit in my hands, which definitely leveled me up as an adult. I would have earned a badge for that one act.)
Anyway, back to this more recent illness: Being sick would have been relatively fine if we had been at home, but at the time we were traveling and 24 hours from heading to the airport to leave. My husband and I quietly discussed what we would do if we had to extend our stay by a couple of days.
My young adult googled their symptoms — several hours of heaving and nothing else, including no fever — and concluded that they likely had food poisoning. Since we all had eaten the same foods the previous day, except for lunch at what we had thought was a delightful outdoor cafe, it was easy to guess that a particular fish dish was to blame.
By that evening, things were much improved, thanks to electrolytes and plain crackers, and our offspring cautiously tried some bland food. No further symptoms ensued, so we decided to go ahead with our flights. We got lucky that we didn’t have to change our travel plans.
Years ago, one of our children started throwing up in the middle of the night when we were in Hawaii for Christmas. Sleep and time took care of the situation and our kiddo was much improved after 24 hours and back to normal a day after that. Again, we were lucky.
Decades ago, my husband and his brother did a post-college whirlwind tour of Europe. They were on a tight budget, so they ate cheap food and slept in hostels. One night in Poland, my husband was violently ill, thanks to some of that aforementioned cheap food. It was a rough time, especially since they were in a shared hostel bunkroom with a shared bathroom, but luckily he recovered enough after 12 hours that they could move on to the next spot on their itinerary as planned.
Not so lucky have been other friends and family who have gotten much sicker or even seriously injured while traveling.
In the 90s and 00s, a relative fell on two different trips and spent days in the hospital both times. Another time, a relative had a serious medical emergency on a cruise ship. Luckily, they had come into port that morning, so he could be transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital, where he stayed for a couple of days. The cruise ship left as scheduled for the next port, so the person’s spouse had to figure out what to do about their cabin and their belongings. (She ended up leaving everything in place and when the patient was released, they arranged for transportation to take them to meet the ship at the next stop.)
More recently, in the past few years, various friends have tested positive for COVID while traveling. In one case, restrictions were still in place, so one person had to isolate at a hotel for a specified period, which meant rescheduling their flight and extending their hotel stay. In a more recent case, friends got COVID and while they weren’t technically required to isolate, they changed their plans until they were able to travel.
Have you ever gotten sick while traveling? Tell me your stories.
What is it about a parent’s brain (usually a mother’s from my experience) that tells them to reach out their hands to catch the vomit? Why do we do that? Yes, I think there must be badges or stars or some sort of ‘leveling up’ associated with this particular behavior.
Such enormous fun, being sick while away from home. You know me to be one such friend.
I read recently a recommendation to have activated charcoal for food poisoning while traveling. Is this something you’ve ever heard about?
We & our besties passed around some violent mercifully brief illness while vacationing together in Phuket a few years ago. My husband was first and worst, then me, then our college friend, and on our last day there his husband felt queasy but nothing too distressing, thankfully. An unexpectedly hard part was finding bland saltine crackers in Thailand but at least we had plenty of free bottled water & a gorgeous resort during recovery.