Happy Birthday to Who(m)?

I had tried to think of everything for his birthday – down to the numeral candles instead of setting the cake ablaze – but never did I consider that the guest of honor might have to leave his own party.

He woke up yesterday feeling a little dizzy, but managed to get through the day with no real incidents. However, when he was still napping at 5:30 and the guests were arriving at 6:30, I began to wonder. When I checked in, he said he felt a little achy and had a headache.

I immediately called my doctor friend Deborah (one of the guests) to see if she thought we should cancel the party. It would have been late notice for people coming from a distance. She advised that we go on with no birthday hugs.

We managed to get through the main course of osso buco and oyster mushroom risotto, but then my husband excused himself to go lie down. He ended up collapsing on the dining room floor and only after 10 minutes or so did a couple of the guests help get him upstairs.

We tried to sing happy birthday loudly enough for him to hear as he dozed upstairs under the covers. Deborah blew out his (two) candles. And then we enjoyed the chocolate royale cake, his favorite ordered from Bistro Bistro in Shirlington.

It was halfway through my piece of cake that my stomach started to hurt. It was just a very full feeling. Then I realized that I hadn’t really been hungry for food all day long.

After the guests had gone home and I was finishing up the dishes, the first wave of diarrhea hit me. After 6 more trips to the bathroom I made my way up to bed. Shortly thereafter I was overwhelmed with nausea and just barely made it to the bathroom. All night long I alternated between these two manifestations of my virus, which was not at all like his, but we both happened to get sick on the same day.

It was just last week that I had commented to Deborah that I couldn’t even recall the last time I was sick, rarely needing a doctor for a viral illness. She made me knock on wood, having just come from a day in the trenches treating case after case of the flu.

Today I feel marginally human. I’ve tempted my stomach with toast and tea and it hasn’t complained yet. But I feel like a wet washrag. There will obviously be no lecture at Temple Micah this morning and no tap-dancing this afternoon. I’m still hoping to get to the 5:00 Capitol Woodwinds concert. And there is a RAK meeting tonight, where my husband is supposed to let people know how he spent his allotment of the February money.

It just takes a virus to remind us that we are human and not necessarily in control of anything. But did this point really need to make the guest of honor miss his own birthday party?