The morning of my thirty-first birthday I woke up in a bed in Italy after dreaming of intense stomachaches.  Then I realized they were real, and I ran to the bathroom feeling like someone had kicked me in the gut.  I spent the next four hours (until dawn) alternately sitting on and kneeling beside the toilet as everything I had consumed (and then some) in the past twenty-four hours left my body violently.  I finally fell asleep around 6:30 am.  We got up a couple of hours later and I made it through breakfast uneventfully.  In honor of my birthday, the girls brought me a cake and card, and they, along with the other guests on the terrace and Maria (the hotel owner) sang me Happy Birthday.  It was the first time I had heard it in an English-Italian hybrid form.  It was beautiful.

We hit the beach for the day, swimming and sunning and doing nothing.  Lunch for me was watermelon and Coke–didn’t want to risk anything more.  My family called on B’s phone and it was great to hear their voices after a week without contact.

Dinner was another shuttle trip to another cliff-top restaurant with a beautiful full view of the sunset.  The curving ride had not done me any favors, and by the time we sat down I was feeling rough.  Then the food came and I knew I was in for a bad scene.  I hoofed it to the bathroom and barely made it in time before I got sick.  Three trips later, I knew I wouldn’t make it through dinner.  B. took a cab with me back to the hotel–we walked past a restaurant staff full of concerned faces on our way out.  The cab driver was the brother of the chef at the restaurant, and he made a valiant but fruitless effort to speak English to us.  No matter–I was too busy praying that I wouldn’t destroy his car to carry on a conversation with anyone other than God.  When we got back to the hotel, I drank a Gatorade, took a Dramamine, and passed the hell out with the lights on.  The other girls got back and everyone made sure I was breathing well before they went to the disco and celebrated my birthday without me.

I’ve never been that sick away from home.  It sucks to be so intimate with an unfamiliar toilet, and to feel alone in it all even though you’re surrounded by friends.  I tried to think of silver linings as I heaved over the bowl.  Friends who bought me Gatorade and didn’t let me ride back alone in a cab.  Family who would jump on a plane if necessary.  The fact that this illness was temporary, I had been sick before, I had gotten through it, I was healthy on a normal day.  I had started and ended the day in the same position, but the rest of it I spent lying on an Italian beach.  If I could have more to be thankful for than gripe about while lying next to my own puke, I figured life was pretty good.