When The Cure Becomes The Cause

I have been meaning to post about this for a couple of weeks now. It is just one of those OMG stories that I have to share.

Two days before Rylie's birthday, I received a call from daycare that Bryce had thrown up. Of course I felt sorry for my little guy, but I was also worried that he had a stomach bug that would spread through our house like wildfire, and that Rylie would be sick on her birthday. I had to postpone her birthday party last year because she was sick, and that was a huge mess, so I was a little totally freaked out that I would have to do that again.

I posted my freak out on Facebook, and my friend Jennifer responded with a link to an article at Minnesota Mama's Must Haves about how you are supposed to drink grape juice to prevent you from getting sick if you have been exposed to a stomach virus. She said you are supposed to drink 100% grape juice three times a day for a few days after exposure.

I headed out the next morning and bought some grape juice, and then picked Rylie up early from school so she could get started on the regimen. I had no idea if it would really work, but it couldn't hurt to try. After all, it was just a few glasses of grape juice, right?

Rylie had her first glass of grape juice when she got home and gulped it right down. I had to leave to run some errands for her party (my mom was home with the kids) and I called Brian and told him to give her another glass when he got home, which he did. She gulped that down and asked for another, so he gave her some more. When I got home she wanted some more, and she gulped down another glass. We sat down to eat dinner 20 minutes later and she asked for even more grape juice with her dinner.

She ate all of her dinner and took a few sips of her grape juice. All of the sudden she got this panicked look on her face and said "Does this have nuts in it?" Just in case you don't know, Rylie has a life-threatening allergy to cashews and pistachios and had an anaphylactic reaction to a cashew on Christmas Eve two years ago...and apparently she remembers that. After I saw the look of fear in her eyes, I assured her that the grape juice did not have nuts in it and asked her why she asked me. She said "because my throat is tight!"

I immediately started going over everything she had eaten since she had been home, and I knew she hadn't eaten anything that had nuts in it. I started freaking out myself when she said she was going to throw up and ran to the bathroom. Brian followed her in there, and by the time I got in there, she was hurling up all of her dinner, along with like a gallon of grape juice. While the recommended three glasses of grape juice would not have hurt her, apparently the super sweet juice does a number on the belly when ingested in large quantities.

Rylie did continue to drink the juice over the next couple of days (in limited amounts, of course) and did not get sick. I, however, was not so lucky. I said I was going to drink the juice myself, but stopped after that first day. I guess I should have kept on drinking it because a week later, I was the one doing the hurling. Luckily it only lasted a few hours, and I was better the next day. Next time, I will drink the three glasses a day for several days. It can't hurt, right?