On Being Sick....

Perfect Daughter has brought the perfectly dreadful flu to our house. While it is no fun to be sick at any time, it REALLY isn't fun to be sick in the summer, and it especially isn't fun to be MY kid and be sick.



I'm a terrible, terrible nurse. Thank the Lord that I personally have not gotten whatever strain of ick that she had, which I attest to the fact that fat people just have "more to withstand life in general with". As in more body. And hey, if I feel bad...I eat something and feel better, right?



But as for nursing? Well, let's just say that it is NOT my calling. My children will tell you that I can cook, I can reasonably clean, I can get their clothes washed, but I'm just not real handy with the "Oh sweetie, can I get you something?" when they are sick. Mostly, I am grumpy. On the one hand, I love them, I truly do, and I hate to see them miserable. On the other hand, if one more person croaks to me that "just a tad of ice cream will help my sore throat" JUST when I get settled on a couch far, far away from their germs....well, don't call me Florence, OK? You know that I'm not exactly nurturing when my kids get their own thermometer (thank heavens for digital read-outs) and let me know when the fever is up and they need more meds. I do manage to dole out the tylenol, and pat the little hot heads, and flee from the room. "Just call if you need anything!" (not).



I watched Perfect daughter suffer in her "nest" in the living room. She was hot, she was cold, she needed vitamin C, she needed ibuprofen, she NEEDED a certain kind of canned soup, she needed to be left alone, she needed to be checked-up on. You get the picture. And it wasn't pretty. In the middle of her febrile state, she was also fielding calls about law schools. (As an aside, I truly do admire her amazing ability to sound completely fever-free and coherent with whatever assistant dean she was talking to at the time---she even was stung by a wasp during one call and didn't cry out...wow. She will be a perfect lawyer, of course.)



Then the coughing started. Cough. Cough. COUGH. COUGH. I started out sweetly offering cough syrup and lozenges. Then I started leaving the room, and sometimes the house. She sounds like a 40-year-old three pack a day smoker. I know it's not her fault, and I know it will end eventually (um, when? We are going on week three here)--but for now, I'm so heartily tired of the flu, the cough following the flu....and the worst of it....the contagion of the flu.



Because yesterday Sweet Girl came down with it. (It's always the skinny ones.) So far, she has been pretty easy to take care of because she just wants to be under the covers. Of course, as with all children, the best covers to be under are mom's covers...which means my bedroom, my last sanctuary from the dreaded illness, is now tainted. I try to look at the bright side. If I get this, I might lost about 10 pounds. I might get a stylish wan cast to my skin. I might develop a taste for a certain canned soup that I MUST have. On the other hand, if I get this, it's not going to be a pretty sight around here. The cooking and laundry services will stop and not just one, but four people, will be quite grumpy. So, I'm holding fast to my "fat people don't get sick theory" and I have Lysol at the ready.



Mr. Herewegoagain, of course, is fleeing out the door to work early each day and coming home a tad later every night. I'm glad he is still mobile. He might have to get that canned soup on his way home one day this week.



Keep Sweet Girl in your prayers. While I think that fat people seldom do get sick, it does seem like the really nice people in the world might get sick more readily. (Perfect Daughter blows that theory, of course, and if Rowdy Boy gets this, well...he is a boy after all). Sweet Girl is too sweet to be sick, and way too sweet to have ME for a nurse. Poor little thing. Pray for her.