Friday, March 21, 2008

Emerging from the viral haze

The past couple of weeks have been filled with the plague at the Chronicle house. First, BabyA came down with something, part cold, part flu, part demonic possession last Wednesday. Thursday and Friday night saw me sleeping on the rather small loveseat in her room all night, both nights, because it just made more sense than getting up every 30 minutes to hour when she would fuss and fuss some more. I did feel for her. You see, she's a binky addict. However, this addiction becomes a problem when you can't breathe through your nose, so you have to breathe through your mouth, and then can't suck on your binky, or, even worse, have it fall out! Her fever got up to in the mid 102s, but was pretty much gone by Sunday. It got her out of her shots at her six month appointment, and two days of daycare. She looked absolutely miserable, and there wasn't much that I could do other than attack with the nose sucky thingy, dose with Tylenol, and let her nurse as much as she wanted. Just as a note, she does feeble very well.

However, my grand total of three hours of cumulative sleep each night did not help me much-I ended up a quivering ball of sleep-deprivation induced migraine and chills. The actual cold hit a day or two later, but I just couldn't function. Husband actually stepped up-he took both Son and BabyA out for a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon so I could sleep. He also schlepped them both over to my brother's for a couple of hours on Saturday night. His thought was that I would feel better by then and we could just get a couple of hours for us, which have been in extremely short supply lately. To give you an idea how lousy I still felt, I actually fled the kitchen when the appetizer plate from Applebee's arrived. Normally I'd fight you for it. Eventually, I tried to eat, but managed to recycle my crackers and water pretty rapidly. It's a good thing that morning sickness never really hit me that way-I'm terrible about getting sick.

I ended up better by Sunday morning, the cold had hit, but I could stand to be in the light without threat of vomit. However, Husband got hit by the flu that afternoon. He didn't get back to work for a full day until that Friday. I actually made him an appointment with a doctor the next morning (using the recently completed clinic five minutes from our house-hooray!), and the doc actually diagnosed him with influenza-not just some random virus. She prescribed Tamiflu, and wow, does that stuff work. I've never encountered an anti-viral that actually DID something. Within two hours of taking it, Husband felt somewhat human, and after the second dose, he was actually able to sit up and eat. It wasn't a cure, but it sure made it all the more bearable. Son had a hard time staying away from Husband, but even with the flu shot, there was no way that I was going to risk it. Ditto that for BabyA. We managed to dodge the bullet, for which I am eternally grateful. Son was very happy when he was finally able to give that hug to Daddy.

I'm still fighting the cold, but its now in that irritating, blowing your nose every five minutes with a cough, that is easy enough to handle. I'm not what one would call 100%, but I'll take what I've got right now. Knowing my luck, I'll probably just get over it in time for my spring allergies to kick in. Because I'm weird, I've managed to develop some not so fun seasonal allergies that only seem to get worse as I get older. Thank God this will most likely be my last spring nursing-bring on the prescription-grade stuff! But then again, it would have to stop snowing for any spring allergies to pop up. Since we got almost a foot right before Easter, I think that I've got a couple of more good weeks. Nothing like having to excavate your vehicle before you leave in the morning. Blech.

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