Land of the ill

It's been a while since I've made a post. Sometimes the longer it goes between posts - the more difficult it becomes to create one.

We have been ill. It started last Monday when Allison came home early from school and promptly fell asleep on the couch (Allison gave up napping at age 2 and a half and has never looked back). Then Brian got home from work feeling a little badly. Both stayed home Tuesday and Wednesday with fevers / fatigue. Wednesday night was my turn, but luckily Brian and Allison went back on Thursday. I can't speak to Brian's experiences - but generally I think adults are not equipped for high fevers. Give me a temp of 99.5 and I think I might be dying. So three days around 101 was truly miserable.

Friday I went into urgent care to learn - wonder of wonders - I had the flu. We do not know if it is "The Flu," but given the patterns in the area, I think that is the presumptive diagnosis. Friday also brought Allison's fever back up. She fell asleep during library check out and apparently napped for about 20 minutes - but that was 2:50-3:10pm, so she didn't get sent home from school. She also got a cough and runny nose (symptoms avoided in the initial phase).

Saturday morning, Jacob fell too - leaving Brian as the only well person in the house. Jacob is a relatively easy kid to be sick. He took a 3 hour morning nap in bed with me and then chilled on the couch for the remainder of the day.

Sunday morning prompted me to go back to urgent care (as I was only getting worse on day 5) to learn I had pneumonia and shouldn't return to work until Thursday. This will be fodder for a future post about what I am and am not paid to do. The doctor also said we should take Allison into the ped's office on Monday because her pattern of getting better and then worse was a concern.

Monday morning - Jacob's fever is gone but not in the 24-hour window (and he has a bloodshot eye - so the daycare won't take him back anyway before ruling out pink eye) and Allison still has a fever. So I call the, presumably inundated, ped's office and get a 10am appointment. We go in and viola! the 101 fever at home (measures by mouth thermometer, mind you, not that inaccurate ear one) was gone and my kids are bouncing off the walls while I am trying to explain that yeah, Allison has had the flu for a week now.

There must be magic curative effects in simply making the doctor's appointment. Or perhaps children have a biological ability to make their parents look like idiots. Of course - the fever was back by mid-afternoon.

So today, Jacob returned to daycare (very, very sad to learn that he missed Monday's pumpkin patch field trip that he'd been talking about for a whole month), Allison's fever finally broke last night so she should be OK to return to school tomorrow. And the antibiotics have kicked in and I am finally also feeling a bit better today. So hopefully, we can put H1N1 (?) behind us and look for a pumpkin patch to visit this weekend.