Last night was no fun. Stomach flu.
I usually don’t get sick. My immune system is pretty good; plus nothing bolsters it like working with kids, who when it gets right down to it are little germ magnets. They’re not immune, catch everything, and pass it around to their friends and their teachers. It’s rare that I come down with anything other than the occasional cold. But last night, I just couldn’t keep anything down. (And relax, that's all the gory detail I’ll go into.)
So I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, begging God to make me well enough by tomorrow morning (which he did) and worrying my roommate that he might catch whatever I have.
“There’s nothing you can take to make you any better?” he said. “How about NyQuil?”
I swore I’d never have NyQuil again about nine years ago. At the time, I was an undergrad at Bethany College and some advertising firm had made and distributed these “campus survival kits,” consisting of various personal grooming articles that students may or may not need. It included trial-size versions of deodorant, soap, shampoo, shaving foam, a razor, chewing gum, and NyQuil.
Many students in our pharmaceutically-enhanced society discovered if they ever had any kind of ache or pain at night, NyQuil would knock ’em out completely. Some of them became NyQuil addicts. “You gonna use that bottle of NyQuil?” became a commonly-heard question in the halls and the cafΓ©. Because if you weren’t, someone would take it off your hands and put it to not-as-recommended use.
That year I had a pretty obnoxious cold, and as I was trying to sleep I kept waking myself up with a coughing fit. NyQuil was, of course, recommended. I’d never tried it before—Mom doesn’t approve of cold medicines, since most of them had alcohol as their active ingredient, and getting children drunk is no way to cure a cold—but I inspected the bottle and it was only 10 proof. Down the hatch.
As I waited for it to take effect, I could actually feel my brain melting. I couldn’t speak complete sentences. I was using the wrong word for everything. And when I finally woke up in the morning, I had a most savage hangover.
I’m not doing that again.
My roommate also suggested Alka-Seltzer, which he’s a big fan of, but aspirin wasn’t going to do the trick either. “There’s no point in taking something that won’t stay down,” I said, “because it’ll just come back up again in 20 minutes. No. The only thing that’s gonna do anything to this is prayer. So the next time you’re in the lobby, could you ask the guys to pray for me?”
He told the guys in the lobby. Now, among most other Christians, they’d drop what they were doing, come to the room, lay hands on the sick person, and pray loudly to Jesus (saying his name frequently so as to get his attention) that they rebuke this illness. Then, once they felt they’d done their duty, they'd say some platitudes like “feel better, man” and leave.
But the guys in the lobby aren’t Christians. They’re footballaters. (Which rhymes with idolaters.) The game couldn’t be interrupted for anything, much less a puking hallmate. If they did bother to pray, they did it briefly during a commercial break, but not a one of them has come to me since and asked about how I was feeling. They didn’t care. The game was on.
So after an uneasy night, and not really enough sleep, I felt well enough in the morning to go to church and fulfill my responsibilities; and then I came back to my hall and took a giant nap. I feel mostly okay now.
The footballaters are busy occupying the lounge, so I guess I’m not watching 60 Minutes tonight. Oh well.