The NoroCORE Collaborative is running a series of posts for Halloween on norovirus nightmares. The first post comes from one of my graduate students, Katie Overbey.

During Spring Break of 2014 I was spent the week with my boyfriend in New Orleans and we stayed with my aunt. As one does in New Orleans, we ate lots of tasty food and tried lots of drinks. On the Saturday of our trip, after eating at my aunt’s favorite Mexican restaurant (side note: who eats Mexican food when they visit New Orleans?) she decided to take us on what has since been deemed the ‘drinking tour of the French Quarter.’ After about three hours I started to feel queasy right in the middle of the iconic Pat O’Briens Bar. We thought maybe I was hungry from our day of activities so we headed to get dinner. The place was packed and while waiting for our food, it hit me. I weaved through the crowd to get to the bathroom, just to discover that one stall was broken, the other was occupied and there was a line. I apologized to the people in line for what was about to happen and then proceeded to throw up in the sink, because as anyone who’s had norovirus knows – when it decides to hit, there’s not much you can do.

After cleaning up as best I could (though after my master’s research I now know that bathroom was doomed because of all my aerosolized vomit) we headed back to my aunt’s as fast as possible. I proceeded to get sick all night long, which ironically put a damper on the rest of my relaxing vacation.

At first, my aunt and boyfriend thought I had enjoyed the drinking tour too much, but I knew that what I had was way worse. I suspect that it had something to do with the Mexican food because after my aunt ate some of my leftovers, she got sick too.

Katie Overbey is an MS student in Food Science at NC State studying how to better communicate with schools having norovirus outbreaks and environmental detection of norovirus