Oh What a Night

What a night we just had!

My mom came and stayed with Luke so I could visit Marcus in the hospital in the late evening. I got home just as this storm hitting Palawan right now was really intensifying. Crazy wind and rain! Predictably after a while the power went out so mom and I had to do all our getting ready for bed in the dark. Thankfully the power outage didn’t last too long and I settled into bed around 10:30. The wind was howling so loudly I thought I’d never fall asleep, but I did.

Warning – only read the next part if you do not get squeamish about poop and vomit!

So I fell asleep only to be woken up an hour later by the sound of Luke gagging. I jumped out of bed and got him sitting up on my lap and rubbed his back. He eventually stopped gagging but was clutching on to me so I knew something was still bothering him. Sure enough a couple minutes later he started having massive amounts of diarrhea. I couldn’t believe how much it seemed was coming out of this poor boy. I have of course been very worried that Luke would contract amoebeasis again so I’ve kind of been waiting for this. We waited for a while then I lay him down to get him cleaned up. I changed his diaper on the diaper pad only to realize a minute later that his poop was so watery and so much that it had come up the back of his diaper and was midway up his back. I got him up and started leading him to the bathroom where he promptly started throwing up. When he was done I gave him a bath and got him in clean clothes and back in bed. Thankfully he loves waking up to find his Lola so they cuddled and got into a happier mood while I cleaned up all the nasties. Lola eventually got Luke back to sleep.

I packed up the dirty diaper and went into our living room to put the bag outside overnight, only to find a huge section of our living room floor totally wet. We’d had a leak in our roof a few months before but never got it fixed because it only let water in once and we kind of forgot about it. But the downpour last night was so strong that water had come in. So I cleaned that all up and situated a bucket and some floor mats in the area where it seems like the water comes in.

Finally went back into the room and started getting into bed only to find a portion of the bedspread and sheets by my feet damp. Sniffed it – vomit. Great. Way too exhausted to change all the sheets and it wasn’t much so I just grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol and dumped it on to disinfect. Of course after doing this the smell of alcohol was so strong that I worried it would set Luke off on a gagging and vomiting fit. Thankfully it did not.

Was just about to drift back off to sleep when the power went off again. Got up to get our solar fan on, got back into bed. Couldn’t sleep because of the howling wind and rain and soon started hearing what sounded like drops of water coming into the room. Got up again and realized that the rain was hitting our windows so hard that despite the windows being shut, water was coming in. So then had to mop all that up, put a towel against the window, dry off the books and things that had gotten wet and mop up the floor.

Throughout all this I was texting with Marcus who is unfortunately still just feeling so weak and rotten. I think he’s probably going to have to stay in the hospital a few more days.

Couldn’t go back to sleep cause I kept worrying Luke would be sick again and I kept checking to see if his fever had returned. Thankfully he didn’t have any more episodes and slept quite peacefully. This morning he has a slight fever but is in good spirits. I don’t actually think he has amoebeasis because the poop was so different from what it is like when he has the parasite. This seems more consistent with the flu/stomach bug that has plagued half my family for the last 10 days. So hopefully this too will pass.

Finally drifted off to sleep around 4:30 and was thrilled to realize at 6 am that the power was back on. Jumped up to turn on the coffee maker so our coffee could brew before any more potential power outages.

It is still raining so hard and throughout the night I kept thinking of all our clients who live in thatch roof nipa houses. I hope they fared through the night ok. We are under storm signal 2 right now and it doesn’t look like the rain and wind will die down anytime soon. Praying and hoping for the best.

Sigh. Onwards into 2013. At some point things have to get better right?