Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Wedding; or, Think Twice Before You Read This

Last night, a mere five days before I am to realize my Very Greatest Dream, I experienced my Very Worst Nightmare:

Throwing up and pooping at the same time.

I started feeling sick right after my Sicilian slice and Diet Pepsi at the pizza joint around the corner from the hospital, a feeling which progressed throughout several visits with patients and conversations with colleagues, until finally I was riding home on the subway, tapping my feet and breathing through the stomach cramps and dizziness and willing myself to Just Make It Home Without Humiliating Myself.

I got home, made a brief visit to the boys room - - nothing unusual so far - - and put myself to bed, where I proceeded to writhe around and contort myself into various pseudo-yoga poses as I tried to quell the rumbling and the moaning and the General Feeling That Something Wasn't Quite Right. Then I went back to the bathroom, and that's when it happened. The certain knowledge that I was about to vomit. Complicated by the certain fact that I could not remove myself from my current seated position.

It wasn't nearly as flawlessly executed as I had always hoped it might be, whilst worrying that it might Ever Happen over the years, but it also wasn't nearly as violent or horrific. I simply picked up the trash can and went to town, staring down at the empty toilet paper roll, used dental floss and discarded Irish Spring box and wondering if perhaps an empty can might provide for a purer, more simple, less encumbered experience.

The next hour was spent sitting on my come-to-find-out Filthy bathroom floor wrapped in M.'s towel (after a brief attempt at propriety, I'd wrenched mine off the towel rack to mop my sweaty and sullied brow), returning to bed, shivering and sweating and shivering again, more writhing and positioning, more moaning (it's interesting to discover what words one locks onto as one's mantra during these situations; mine are, apparently, "Jesus" and "Fuck"), and then returning to the bathroom where I turned around in panicky circles like my dog used to do before he vomited, before finally throwing up like a Normal Person into the toilet.

Then M. came home with Saltines and Ginger Ale and Advil and played nurse while I lay in bed watching Wifeswap and Super Nanny and How to Get the Man on our screwy antenna-less bedroom television, before finally passing out on the couch with the fan blasting on my face.

It's over now, save for a generalized feeling of weakness and battle-weariness and the sense that the fire blazing under my skin all night has now died down to a smoldering pile of dying embers.

There are suspicious rumblings from Myself and Others that there is a psychosomatic wedding-related element to all of this, although I feel like if it was all in my head I would have at least enough mind control to spare myself the embarrassment of the Double Whammy. Then again, I did tell my body, in a very stern tone, that it had exactly one night's sleep to enjoy its little party, but after that I didn't want to hear any more about it. And it listened.

So who knows.

The Lesson Learned is that I need to relax. This came to me his while propped up against the side of the tub last night, pondering whether or not there might be an element of emotional stress or mental anguish involved in this Whole Disaster. I thought to myself, God, if any of this could have been abated by a little less internal tension and anxiety, you really ought to reconsider how you handle things.

So, psychosomatics or otherwise, maybe this is just what I needed as I enter the Final Countdown. Because no matter how bad things get, how neurotic I am about the decorations or the red wine or the vows or my father or the weather, nothing can be as bad as last night.

Unless Goth DJ doesn't show up. In which case I will internally combust and disintegrate into a billion little pieces which, while unsightly, won't be nearly as drawn-out or humiliating or untidy.

Deep breaths.