The Plague

OK, so perhaps a little dramatic (who, me?), but the last couple of weeks at least one person in our house has been sick with some sort of funk. It started two weeks ago Tuesday, when Phil called me home from work because Amy was throwing up. This news immediately sent me into a cold sweat for several reasons, most notably because I have a major aversion to throwing up myself, and so I dislike being around anyone who is actively puking. We have had a tendency toward the stomach flu in the past (more than any other family I have ever heard of), and so of course I started being scared that we were all going to get the barfs. This would have also presented a problem since this was two days before the delivery of 30 pallets of Bermuda sod to our home. We quietly held our breath, hoping for the best, and this time God smiled on us, sort of.

On Wednesday evening, I had to pull into a gas station for Nathan to throw up all over the parking lot, but it was just that one time and he felt fine after that. Amy only threw up those couple of times that one night, but then Friday night the poor thing started running a fever and feeling just miserable. She is almost old enough to be able to tell us if something hurts along with the high temperature, but not quite. Our pediatrician's office runs a sick clinic on Saturday mornings, so we decided that it would be best for us to take her and make sure her throat and everything was OK. We didn't want things to get worse and then it would be Sunday and she would just have to suffer until Monday. Everything checked out fine and she came away with the diagnosis of the notorious "fever virus." In the past when one of the kiddos had a virus like this, it lasted maybe 24 or 36 hours, so we kept on with the sod-laying, Phil's mom watched Amy and snuggled her and medicated her, and we waited for the fever to break. But it didn't. She kept running a temperature all the way until Tuesday, which meant I couldn't go to work, because she wasn't able to go to daycare until she had been fever-free for 24 hours. When we made it to Wednesday without another temperature spike, we thought we were home free.

Then, on Friday, I started feeling bad. Sore throat, aches, tired, but no fever. I went on to work as we were pretty understaffed, and was unhappy all night long. Unfortunately, Saturday night we were more understaffed than Friday, so calling in sick wasn't really an option. So, I suffered through that night too. I was so happy to get home and crawl into bed, but when I got up that afternoon, I was hit with another round. My eye was matted shut, and bright, bloodshot pink. Fan-freaking-tastic. Incidentally, this was the Sunday before the Monday and Tuesday I had signed up to work overtime, and we were still really understaffed. God bless Kevin and Ashley, who had saved the eyedrops from Blake's recent bout with pinkeye, and the bottle was almost full. So, I was able to prepare for work and not feel guilty about possibly infecting anyone else. Then, as I was getting up from my pre-work nap Monday afternoon, the phone rang. It was Nathan's school calling to tell me he was running a fever of 103.3, and could I please come get him? Sigh.

The poor guy was resting on his mat in the director's office when I got there, cheeks and lips bright red, and nearly in tears as he told me he didn't want to go to the doctor. I asked him about his throat and ears and stomach, nothing else was hurting him, so I figured we would ride it out. Probably just the fever virus. But what to do about my job? Good luck--both Mom and Phil were able to take part of the day off on Tuesday, so Mom took the AM shift and Phil came home at lunchtime for the PM shift. Nate had a fever when he woke up Tuesday morning, and he threw up once that morning, but was fine after that. No more fever that day or that night, so he was able to go to school Wednesday. I'm not sure what we were going to do if he had had to stay home Wednesday morning; he may have just watched TV in my room while I napped for a few hours. Everyone felt fine yesterday, the weather was beautiful, the sun was shining. Today, I have a sore throat (still), and am wondering if I should just carry myself to my doctor's office. Blech. I feel like I need to spray the entire house with Lysol and open the windows to allow the evil spirit of sickness to escape from our house. Too bad the nice weather is gone today...it's drizzly and cool. So much for getting out of the house and going to the park to let the kids burn off some of the energy they are using to drive me crazy. At least they are feeling better! Also, I am wondering if Phil has some kind of super-immunity because he has managed to not get so much as a sniffle through all of this. Hopefully, we are getting all of the illness out of the way this week, because next week is Spring Break, and I'm really hoping to come up with some fun stuff to do with the kids that involves sunshine, fresh air, and lots of running around outside.