When I knew I wanted to marry Stephanie  − 1 April, 2004

It was the end of the week. Steph and I were headed into a beautiful San Diego weekend without any real obligations. It was looking sunny and relaxed all around. Come Thursday night you could even say we were buoyant with expectation.

It hit me first at about 5 AM on Friday morning. I woke up and went to the bathroom with the strange feeling that I needed to barf. I did. Several times. Then I came back to bed thinking that was strange. I was feeling feverish and achy all of the sudden. I had a virus. It came out of nowhere.

Next at about 6:30 Stephanie got up and she did the same thing. Barf city. Looked like we were both going to miss work on Friday.

By the time we both called in from work at 8 we'd been to the toilet a few more times. Double-trouble. Both ends were spewing and the end was not within sight. Having told our colleagues this, they warned us not to become dehydrated. Steph's boss showed up at the apartment to give us some gator-aid. Then Heidi showed up with some soup and sustenance at lunch time.

The pain had gotten so bad for me that I was not able to drink or eat very much at all. The convulsions I was experiencing made food just seem all the more intolerable.

The day progressed into the night and we'd done nothing but be sick and watch TV. Thank God for TiVo. I'd recently recorded all 20 episodes of "I love the 80's" and had them waiting in the queue. There's 10 hours right there. We watched every episode back to back laughing in between visits to the bathroom.

It must have been about 2 AM Saturday morning when we'd run out of bad TV to watch and we found "Breakfast at Tiffany's" on bravo or starz or something. This is Stephanie's favorite movie and one that I'd forgotten since the last time I saw it. We watched it and fell asleep.

At one point during the night I looked over at Steph and her eyes were sunken and she had these dark circles under her eyes. Her skin was clammy and cold. Her breath stank like "sick breath." I was no pretty picture either. Steph said I looked like I was going to die. Nevertheless, in spite of our pain and misery we were laughing and having the best time. Keep in mind that we'd been together a few years by now. We'd been living with each other long enough to be sick of spending every waking hour together. But for some reason we just didn't feel the pain. We were sick and miserable and having the time of our lives at the same time.

Comments:

Previous story  |  Next story