Wendyl Nissen: Under the weather

The last time I threw up I still shopped at Pumpkin Patch. I know this because I threw up into a Pumpkin Patch shopping bag I found on the floor of the car I was throwing up in. I figure that must be about eight years ago, as my stylish 11-year-old daughter refused to wear the label after the age of 3.

You may have guessed by now that I've been ill. Very, very ill. Which for some people is a reasonably common occurrence, nothing to write home about, or indeed write a column about. But I never get sick. Not for me the violent power vomit, the draining diarrhoea or the bronchial chest cough that last for weeks. I get a little sniffle or an upset tummy and simply pop into bed for the afternoon and come right as rain.

I smugly put this down to my rejection of corporate stress and a career change that sees me working from home in a comparatively relaxed fashion. That and the fact that my house hasn't seen a chemical in the form of a commercial cleaner for years and my body has not seen a processed food, an additive or a preservative in ages.

Until Sunday night I was living proof that you are what you eat, breathe and stress about. I even ate pork in Mexico when we were there last month. Swine flu found nothing inviting in my temple of purity and chemical-free living but this local bug found itself quite at home.

"This just doesn't happen to me," I managed to mumble as I collapsed back into bed at 4am after what could only be described as a complete clean-out. I must have been delirious, because I failed to wake my husband to help me as I lay facing certain death on the bathroom floor. Later I was thankful I hadn't. There are only so many sights in a marriage involving bodily fluids that a partner should have to sustain. They all involve giving birth, which doesn't involve nearly as much mess.

"Did no one tell you I've been very, very ill!" I interrupted my mother as she called to put in her usual weekly order for my book, which is proving to be a star on her Christmas shopping list.

"Your father will pick them up on Fri ... oh, yes, someone did say you were having a lie down, but I just presumed it was one of your little turns."

My mother believes that I work far too hard and that the only way I get through it all is to have frequent "turns", which is otherwise referred to in my house as a cup of tea and a lie down.

"I threw up. All over the bathroom and I had to clean it up myself. It was awful," I moaned, reverting to a 6-year-old - as you do with your mother when you are 47.

"Oh dear, you wouldn't have liked that, you're just not a thrower-upper are you? Unless there's alcohol involved like that time when you were 15 and drank that bottle of whisky."

"Well, actually ..."

"Out the window of your room at the bach on New Year's Eve. The whole bay heard you."

"I was at least 18 and it was gin."

There was nothing for it but to take to my bed and moan. About deadlines I couldn't meet, shopping that needed to be done, gardening that couldn't wait and social functions not being attended. Really fun social functions, where I was sure I would be sorely missed.

"Another cup of tea?" was all my family could think to say, so unaccustomed are they to finding me in bed for three days unwilling to boss them around and insisting on occasionally staggering around the house bumping into walls, determined to feed the chickens.

"The last time she was like this' ...' - I heard one of the adult children recall to another in the kitchen.

"Enough about the alcohol!" I interrupted before tripping over the dog and landing in a heap on the kitchen floor. Which made a nice change from the bathroom floor, although the timber is much the same in both rooms.

And then it was all over. I'm much better now, thank you for asking. And yes, I will have that drink now, if you don't mind.