Influenza

Influenza go away...
Don't come back (or I'll bite, kick, scream, spit nails and otherwise protest fully) another day.

Never a good sign when you have two posts in one season titled with major sicknesses. And that doesn't include all the other posts we could have written called "snot," "cough," "congestion" or "fever."

It seems our lovely party (pictures of which indicate a good time was had by all) was a veritable germ fest. By late Tuesday, I was coming down hard with what has been verified as Influenza A (the most rigorous and severe of all the Influenza strains- nothing but the best for me), Ella had a cold, Emilie had the stomach flu, Mindy, Charissa, and Emerson all had varying degrees of severity of the stomach flu, my sister Kathryn had bronchitis and my niece Michaela was coming down with a fever, Brevan had an intractable 103 degree temp and Sandi's parents and Kristi had chest colds. If anyone else got sick, I don't want to know. See if I serve tofu dip again.

If you haven't had Influenza (it's a respiratory flu- high fever, exhaustion, body aches, sore throat, wet cough, and a general feeling of death) it is no picnic. This is the sucker we get the flu shot for and this year they guessed the wrong strain and there have been huge Influenza outbreaks. I was in bed sick for 3 full days and have been two more trying to get back up to speed. Luckily, they have a medicine (Tamiflu) that shortens the length of the flu from 2 weeks to 5-7 days and you can take it if you catch it within the first 24-48 hours which we did. When the nurse called with my lab result she said, "Dig yourself a hole. Crawl inside and pull your Tamiflu in behind you." That is exactly how I've felt.

Now, to the "angels in disguise" part of my story. Sandi called in to work once this week and has no more earned time from her maternity leave. Here I am, not incredibly sick but not well either, faced with taking care of the girls for 14 hours. I haven't been a day in the past five without two naps, some of which are several hours long. Today, Maria and Jeanine came over and picked my girls up (both of them), and took them out for almost 4 hours! I crawled into bed as soon as the door closed and do you know what it was like to sleep in a quiet house with no thought of getting up to help out or wondering how long I had been asleep? Heaven. I cannot thank these two enough. And they brought them home tired which means that, while I slept almost the entire time they were gone, now they are both asleep and I am going to go lay on the couch. This proves to me that one essential component to the modern mother's bag of tricks is friends who love kids and have free time. You two are lifesavers.

So, off to the couch for me. I didn't include pictures with this post. I didn't think it was necessary.