Phobia

Criag recently wrote about his phobia for sharks here. Something happened last night that played on my phobia. Craig also wrote about that here, so I won't bore you with the details.

I have a vomit phobia. Let me break it down for you. I can't see it, hear it, or smell it. If I'm around anyone who is going to puke, I run. Far far away.

Case in point. It was the mid eighties, and I was in high school. Our family went down to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a vacation. We knew not to drink the water, but we were also instructed not to eat anything that couldn't be peeled or cooked. Most of the vacation passed without a problem. However, one night at dinner my sister had some sangria. With ice in it. Big mistake. The next afternoon I was sitting on the balcony of our hotel room and I hear commotion in the room. Apparently my sister had woken from a nap and puked. My mom had it handled, and since I hadn't heard/seen/smelled anything, I was cool. She spent the next few hours in bed, feeling crappy.

Later my parents and my brother wanted to take a walk down the beach. My sister said she was feeling much better, so we decided to sit by the pool. I thought it was safe since she had gone several hours without yacking. However, 15 minutes into our sunbathing and she says, "I don't feel good. We need to go back to the room."

Right. Lets go, pronto. We hustle up the room only to discover that we hadn't grabbed a room key. Sis is looking greener and greener, so this is becoming an emergency. I spot a maid's cart a few rooms down, and I start telling the maid how we have to get into the room because my sister is sick. She doesn't speak english. Lovely. So I motion for her to come out into the walkway (the rooms opened up to the outside so there was no interior hallway) and took her to my sister. We were trying to get our point across, but she wasn't getting it.

Then my sister spoke the universal language of puke. She started to heave - and I turned and bolted. Literally the second I saw a bit of the pink Pepto-Bismol come out of her mouth. I abandoned my sister on the walkway, ran down the stairs, and down the beach until I found my parents. The goal - get as far away from the puke as possible. When I told them the situation they were horrified that I had just left my sister there with a spanish speaking stranger.

We all headed back to the room. I didn't want to go back to the room and have to walk past her puke in front of the door. Luckily the maid had cleaned it up. Also, she was nice enough to let my sister in and take care of her until we came back.

My last puke experience involved my borhter, and it was just a few weeks ago. I was visiting California for my 20th high school reunion. The same night as the reunion my brother was having a halloween party. I came back to his house from the reunion with my friend who had gone with me so she could change out of her party clothes. It was only 12:30 and the party was over, so I thought maybe it was just a dud. As I'm walking her to the door, I hear my brother puking. And it's a doozy. She says "Sounds like your brother had fun." Yeah, great.

I have to get up super early to catch my plane back to Cleveland, but there is no way I can sleep if I can hear him puking. So I get in bed, lie on my side, turn the clock radio on really low, and balance it on my head to that it's playing directly in my ear (yeah, I don't have an ipod - that would have been ideal). That way I can't hear anything cause the other ear in jammed into the pillow. You'd think that would solve the problem, but it doesn't. It takes care of the audio issue, but mentally I'm a mess. Just thinking that he's puking mere feet away gets me so upset that I start to feel sick myself. At one point I have to go have a big diahrrea poop, but I don't want to move in case he's puking when I'm in the bathroom. Fortunately I'm able to hurry up and get it done without hearing any heaving. At 2:30 or so, someone put some laundry in the washer. I don't even want to know what that was about.

Somehow I got some sleep, and soon it was time to get up and head to the airport. When I was walking out the door at 4:45, he was still blowing chunks. Yuck.

So, yeah, I'm a little neurotic about puke. Now, you're probably thinking, "She has kids? She's screwed." Yeah, this has been a worry for both Craig and I. So far I've been able to handle it. Last night I wasn't the one puked on, but I did hold Macey afterwards and a few times she let out big burps that smelled really gross. My stomach was churning, but I was able to hold it together. Hopefully I will be able to handle it if I am puked on.

Yeah, I'm neurotic about puke. So if you're puking, I'm really sorry, but don't expect any help from me. I'll be running down the beach.