The Season of Sickness

It’s been a bed winter. I often imagine that this is what the plague years were like. Or the influenza outbreaks or measles or any of the sicknesses that used to wipe out so many people before we were blessed with modern medicine. I hear people say that we don’t need it, their grandpa/ great aunt Charlotte/ some unknown person way back when lived to one hundred and they didn’t need any of this new fangled medicine. Or vaccines for that matter.

That’s great but what about everybody else? The ones who died by the thousands because there was no penicillin? No C Sections? My sister-in-law and I would not be here. To simple things like not knowing how much aspirin to take, leading to numerous deaths among those it was supposed to help during the 1918 flu epidemic. But I digress.

Everybody is sick. The two children are in bed coughing there poor little hearts out. Doctor says probably RSV, something the insurance company spent a fortune on, can’t remember for sure but at least a thousand a shot once a month, protecting The Goblin Child from as a baby. Hopefully it really is mostly harmless for otherwise healthy children. Both are on medication, might as well get it over with at the same time at least. Both for Strep Throat. Maybe they wont reinfect each other. The Goblin Child has tossed hers right back up once, tossed pain meds once and tonight it was her super for no apparent reason. Right on my feet, what fun. She has been running a pretty good fever for days now. Tonight she was actually feeling batter and of a normal temperature.

Yesterday I begged my hard working husband to come home and rescue me. A nasty bug hit me, and I think 8 earlier in the day. I collapsed on the couch letting him take over child care duties. Tonight it was his turn to be sick.

But I can hardly complain when everyone else seems to have it so much worse. My brothers children have been sick all winter it seems like, up all night last night throwing up. Again. Glad we haven’t gotten to do that. My mom has been trying to die for the last week. She sounds awful, the doctor says bronchitis. The flu has been going around and Cade got it bad, shared it with his mom. Ava somehow managed to avoid it. Yay!

A friend had a child go into Febrile convulsions. Talk about terrifying. She was ok, so was the child. Her new baby had a lung infection early on in the year, nothing is worse than a sick newborn. That whole family has been sick with one thing right after another all winter, now ear infections and tubes.

Another has had to deal with ear infections, sore throats, cough, sinus infections, throw up, diarrhea and dog poop. That is more bodily fluids on the carpet of one house than anyone should ever have to clean. Life is just not fair sometimes.

There is a family at school who had home schooled until this year. All four of their children are home sick, with one in the hospital. It’s like the natives being introduced to European diseases all over again and the only compelling argument in favor of public schooling I’ve heard. Get them exposed from a young age. In our little local school of two hundred children there has been around twenty kids and a handful of teachers home sick almost every day it seems.

Spring is coming, the weather is beautiful, surely something has to put an end to this season of sickness. Until then I will spend my time being grateful to modern medicine and keep dispensing the pain killers.