Emet Quirks
One thing I've noticed since I first learned such a thing as emetophobia even exists is that everyone has difference levels of phobia, different triggers, different little quirks. I know one of my little quirks is that I try and take notice the stock of Pepto Bismol and Pedialyte at the grocery store. If it looks like a lot are missing from the shelves, I assume a nasty sv* is going around. Nearly every time my husband goes to the bathroom, I ask him if he's okay. If someone leaves their pew in church, I wonder if they're going to v* and then try and mull over in my mind if I shook their hand or not. Every day my husband is at work, I worry that he'll come home early and he'll be ill. When Swine Flu first arrived on the scene and it was the main news story every single day for the first year, I remember being less worried that "OMG it's new and it's a pandemic and it kills healthy people!" and more terrified by the finding that, "this strain of influenza appears to have more of an affect on the gastrointestinal tract and we're seeing more d* and v* than with other strains." I chose to home school my son and don't work outside the home, just to limit our overall household exposure. During flu and Noro season, I don't even let my son go to church. He stays with my grandmother on Sunday mornings. It got to the point where when he comes back, people are like, "I didn't even know you had children!".
The worst one, though, is that I have a really difficult time letting my stepson visit. He lives in another state, so my husband hardly sees him in the first place. But he comes and visits for a week in the summer. Granted, I know sv* are not as bad in the summer, but he gets something that causes him to v* about once every three or four months, because his mother isn't very clean and they eat out every single day. So he picks up bugs at restaurants, and whatnot. I spend the entire week he's here panicking. Last time he was here, the last day of his visit, he kept complaining about feeling very n* and headachy. I couldn't wait for him to get on the plane the next morning. I hate that. I hate wishing I could tell my husband, "by the way, your kid can't visit." I didn't want my husband to go to his own uncle's funeral, because there was a potluck afterward and he was expected to go, because he was a pallbearer.
If I'm at the pharmacy and I see a dark stain on the carpet, I wonder if someone tu* there. I'm terrified I'm going to make something that will give my family fp*. Funny story about that, actually. When my sister was pregnant I threw her a baby shower. I asked her what sort of refreshments she wanted and she said, "I want two things - chocolate cupcakes and buffalo wings". So that morning I made up a huge batch of wings and put them in a slow cooker to take to the baby shower. I had it at the fellowship hall of a local church and I had no idea that, for safety purposes, they had a timer on the outlet I plugged the slow cooker into. Because I didn't turn the timer dial, the outlet never even came on, so those wings sat there all day at room temperature. The guys showed up at the end to load up the gifts and take them to my sister's house while my mom and I cleaned up. I got home and my husband said, "wow, those wings were awesome! Me, G (my son) and your dad ate what was left. Were those Aldi brand?" I about lost it. I screamed, "THOSE WERE AT ROOM TEMPERATURE ALL DAY!!!" He shrugged and said, "well, I feel fine." Thank God nothing came of it, but I was on edge for three days after that.
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Originally Posted by mrsjacks
I don't do it every night, only if I freaked out over a possible exposure and then touched my phone, but I almost always wash my hands after handling it and after setting the alarm.
