Two weeks ago, in a flurry of "get stuff done around the house woo-hoo-ness," we did some major brush clearing and hedge/tree trimming. It's a job left unfinished, but it looks much better than it did, and I'm less concerned that there are actual monkeys living in my front yard. It was a warm weekend, and on the second day of work, James ended up working in gym shorts and nothing else. Okay, in hindsight, that's a bad idea, but it's hard to argue with a large sweaty man in the midst of manual labor. In a job that's usually MINE, James apparently ran across some poison ivy. Lots of it. In fact, by the looks of him, not only did he run across it, he wrapped himself in the vines and did the hula dance while rubbing the vile parasite all over himself. So, several days later, he breaks out in a raging case of the creeping crud--legs, feet, belly, waistline, and eye socket all covered in the oozing red itchiness. Ick. Well, anyway, after days and days of sh*t my Granny put me through homeopathic treatments such as salt water baths and nail polish remover, it really wasn't getting any better--in fact, some of it looked worse, as if it were infected. James is lucky enough to have an on-site clinic, staffed by a nurse practitioner, at his job, so he paid the lucky lady a visit on Thursday. She promptly decided that the poison ivy was no longer the problem, but a raging case of cellulitis that was kicking his ass. Steroids and antibiotics were prescribed, and he's well on his way to healing.
As if one member of the household being a semi-invalid weren't bad enough, I started feeling bad (not badly, mind you, I feel things quite well!) on Tuesday. Swollen glands, sore throat, an all-over "out of it" feeling, all just in time for our free flu shots to arrive at school. (I had to take a pass on it until I feel better, but our school nurse is keeping it for me. There are very few perks like that when you're a teacher, so I gotta take advantage of it.) All I wanted to do was sleep, so of course, that's the one thing I couldn't do. Andrew was up several times during the night Tuesday with nightmares (At least one of the dreams involved a prince dying; he said the prince was curled up in a ball on the ground, and he was rising above himself and still able to talk after his body was dead. Interesting ideas from a five year-old.), so of course I was up too, and then ended up "sleeping" in his bed for an hour or two. Andrew was coughing and really tired from his night, and I felt like sh*t on a stick, so we both took Wednesday off to recuperate. I slept a lot, and Andrew trashed the living room single-handedly.
On Thursday, though, we both felt a little better, so we got up and went to school. I struggled through the morning, but started to feel a little better in the afternoon. When Andrew got off the bus at my school, though, I knew something was wrong, and in five minutes he was asleep in my desk chair, feverish and puny. As the evening wore on, his fever spiked around 102-103 while mine crept up to 101. Ideally, this is the part where we're waited on hand and foot by a loving and capable husband and father, but nothing in this household ever works out ideally, and said loving and capable person was miserable as well, so he did the best he could. While MY illness apparently craved carbs (like the dozen donuts I almost single-handedly polished off in the course of 24 hours), Andrew's craved nothing. Not even Spongebob chicken noodle soup appealed to him. Thank goodness for mandarin oranges, or he'd be eating nothing at all.
Preparing for the inevitable second day off, I emailed my plans for Friday to my awesome co-teacher Thursday night, and knew everything was under control there, in spite of full moon fever hitting the middle school. Friday was spent dosing grape Tylenol to Andrew every four hours while he lay around practically motionless watching t.v. (Okay, I KNOW that 15 hours of t.v. is NOT healthy, but it's what we DO when we're sick. And, I'm proud to say that we chose quality entertainment in the form of E.T. and Back to the Future Parts I and II.) In between taking his temperature with the temporal artery thingy (and running upstairs to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, at least until I figured out how to switch the setting--duh) and giving him meds to make him comfortable, I held down the other couch and was miserable myself, without a damn adult Tylenol anywhere in the house. Short of guzzling the entire bottle of grape goo, there was nothing to do but suffer.
To make matters worse, at some point, whatever creepo virus or sinus infection I have going has crept into my eyes, and I now have a raging case of pink eye, the viral type, I assume hope. I'll spare you the disgusting details, but it's rather aggravating to have to pry my eyelashes apart with my fingers after a nap. Ewwww. It's appropriate for the full moon, however, because my eyes look like they belong to some horrible creature who only eats brains for dinner. This monster, however, craved egg drop soup, pork lo mein, and donuts, more donuts. Is it "feed a fever, starve a cold," or the other way around?
So, to make a long story slightly less long, we're home this Saturday morning instead of at the lake where we had planned to be. And I'm disappointed! (I forgot to mention that a raging thunderstorm or possibly even a small tornado touched down in the campground mid-week, uprooting trees and squashing several houses. Ours was fine, as were Dad's and my sister's places, but a few of our neighbors weren't so lucky. Dad's been assisting with clean-up since Wednesday morning, and I think will return home today, since we weren't able to join him down there.) So, welcome to Saturday---a day of self-medicating and recuperating (hopefully). Andrew's fever is gone, and he hopped out of bed and started trying to lure one of the cats into his hamper (I don't know what he was planning to do after that--good thing she didn't fall for it!). If I can get him to eat something, I'll be reassured that he's mending. I, however, have a head full of gunk, bright red eyeballs, and popping ears, but someone has to muck out the mess that several sick people can accumulate over three days. Hoarders, here we come.
1 comment:
I once got such a raging case of pink eye from my eldest daughter that one of my eyes actually swelled shut. I looked like I had been on the losing end of a fist fight.
You have my sympathy.
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