Have you fallen victim to the stomach bug yet? There’s a nasty one going around our church and another circle of friends. So far, we haven’t caught it. But knowing it’s out there leaves me worried that our turn is coming.

It makes me want to build a Clorox-filled moat around the house and pickle the kids into an industrial-sized tub of Purell ‘til it’s over. I recently learned something surprising about stomach bug contagion. Keep reading to learn what it is, and perhaps more of us can stay healthy this winter.

As a kid, I panicked when someone got sick. I think this stems from the time that my little sister threw up in my hair. I was about seven, with long brunette curls that reached to my hips. My sister and I shared a big bed, and I awoke one morning shocked to find that she had thrown up in her sleep, across my pillow and into my hair.

I still feel sorry for my mother, waking up to that mess and her middle daughter screaming like a banshee.

The result has been my life-long battle with emetophobia, or the fear of vomit. It’s more common than you think. Famous sufferers include Matt Lauer and Denise Richards.

Having children has somewhat desensitized me, because kids will puke, and parents will have to clean it up. It’s just part of the deal, a gross but small price to pay for those gorgeous dimpled smiles and little Crayola love notes.

Still, I’d rather have ten colds in a row with only sandpaper to blow my nose into than have one stomach virus course through the family.

I suppose I fear that the next one will be like the one the kids and I has several years ago while my husband was deployed to Iraq. It was my illness boot camp; the Mother of All Sick Days to which all others will be compared forevermore.

It started shortly after bedtime, as viruses often do. Poor Zach threw up every 20 minutes like clockwork, until the next morning, when Eli began vomiting, too. That poor baby pooped through an entire package of diapers in one day. I struggled alone to help them between my own trips to the bathroom. If my friend Linda hadn’t come over with Gatorade, popsicles and Tylenol to get us through the next feverish days, I don’t know what I would’ve done.

We eventually recovered, and held Zach’s birthday party a week after that bug-from-hell. But a strange thing happened. Many of our guests became sick soon after. I thought perhaps they’d caught another virus elsewhere, but an article I recently found on the Centers for Disease Control’s website explained that it most likely came from us.

You may have already known this, but no one I’ve told seems to have heard it before. According to the CDC, people infected with one of the most common gastrointestinal bugs—those in the Norovirus family—are contagious from the moment they begin feeling ill to at least 3 days after recovery. Some people may be contagious for as long as 2 weeks after recovery.

This means that even after your symptoms are gone, you’re still a walking virus depositor. That’s very different from what we’ve been taught about colds and flu. With these respiratory illnesses, one is contagious before symptoms appear and during the illness. But once you feel better, you’re usually good to go.

It’s unreasonable to expect people to stay home two weeks after recovery, but it is particularly important to use good handwashing and other hygienic practices after recovering from a stomach virus. Limiting contact with infants, the elderly and anyone who is immune-compromised is also a good idea.

I wonder why our doctors don’t warn us that we can still spread the tummy crud even after we feel OK? Perhaps in light of all the serious diseases they see, it doesn’t seem that significant. But any mother who has sat up all night on “dehydration watch” or ended up in the ER at 3:00 a.m. probably wishes she knew this.

So I took it upon myself to spread the word through this column. If you’re one of the unfortunate souls who’s battling the virus now, I hope you feel much better soon. No offense, but I also hope that I don’t see you for a little while.