Stomach viruses scare me!

Are you afeared of stomach viruses? Here's a little post from my MySpace blog, written in 2009:

• Countdown to doomsday, t -38 hours & counting

  ..

  There are few things in this world that I have real-time fear of.
  What do I mean by real-time fear? It's a fear I have personal experience that caused the fear. My recent blogging of my arachnephobia is based on real-time experience: My family members have been bitten by mean spiders.
  Fear of nuclear annihlation is not real-time. It's based on the horror I've seen on televison or in print.
  Gastrointestinal viruses are personal. I have had many. In addition, I had some never identified condition for several years. I would awake in the middle of the night with violent, projectile vomiting that went on for hours. Nothing made it stop. This happened from about the age of 3 until I was 8 or so. Extensive testing never identified a cause, and it ended as mysteriously as it began.
  My poor dear children know my emetophobia is deep. (for more on emetophobia, go here:
  http://www.changethatsrightnow.com/emetophobia.asp
  I used to throw a receptacle at them and run as if they were carrying ebola. I would peek in once in a while to see they were still alright, but I was not my loving, nurturing self when they were chucking.
  I had real paralyzing anxiety over regurgitation. The last panic inducing regurgitation occurred about 9 years ago, three days before my first grandchild was born. I got this horrible virus, the worst one I ever EVER had. All the people that got the virus later said it was the worst they had ever contracted. My (now) ex-husband laid in the bed and cried, and my (now) ex-son-in-law begged hospital personnel to give him an epidural for the pain.
  So, in the midst of this horrid event, my darling, nine-month's pregnant daughter came to care for me, proving herself to be much braver than I. I'm still not sure she wasn't proving a point to me for, you see, I had abandoned her to a virus a couple of years before. I stood outside her door, and asked if she was alright, but never ventured into the room. I made other people take her water, whilst I stayed far away.
  My daughter, Athena, waited on me hand and foot. She took wonderful care of me. You know what her thanks were, for mothering me? The most horrible stomach virus on earth hit her in the middle of labor. She was the most stoic laboring mother I have ever seen, and remained so throughout the regurgitation and diarrhea.
  I will be sent to one of the circles of hell for this, I am certain. Not only did she lovingly take care of ME when I was sick, but her kindness was rewarded with misery.
  So, present day.... I learned my lesson. Stomach viruses are not likely to kill me. My granddaughter came down with one about 14 hours ago, here at my home. She brought it here from my nephew and his wife, who had it two days before.
  So here I sit. I know I will get the virus, because I ate a cracker my granddaughter had taken a bite of.
  And I am not afraid. Thanks Athena. You cured me.