Friday, August 15, 2008

Sick.... and tired!

Where've I been? Um, yeah - I've been sick. Now I've been sick before, and I've used that phrase - 'I'm sick' and I meant it when I said it, but this time, I was REALLY sick. Like a miserable f level of sick. Granted, I wasn't Really REALLY sick - that's when you custom design t-shirts and host a fund raiser - nothing like that - just a pile-on of generic nasty bugs having a little party in my body. A party that wouldn't stop. and 14 days later STILL HASN'T, God help me.
The source of this plague? My family, natch. I should say 'plagues' plural. See, that's one of the things that's made this particular party such a t-total blast. Back to back diseases - it was a little virus relay race. Shoot me now.
The first leg of this illness started with the Hubble- whom I nursed back to health JUST in time to get the very same disease, only worse. Perhaps we would have had a closer relationship with the Lysol container during the initial Hubble illness had we realized that he was, in fact, ill. Don't mistake, he was clearly having symptoms. Its just that the symptoms he had mislead us into thinking that what he actually had was food poisoning. FOOD POISONING! Can you guess what symptoms might have lead us to that conclusion?! Hmm?! Gads. But no, NOT food poisoning. Nasty ass stomach bug (no pun intended). Which I promptly caught and lifted to a whole new level of suck. I had managed to delude myself into thinking I had managed to avoid the whole thing until sat the 2nd.
I was feeling a little 'off' on Friday, but I'm always wicked tired on Fridays after a whole week of having to get up and act like a responsible human after nights of no sleep, so I didn't think anything much of it. Then Sat came around. I was up at a semi-reasonable hour, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I was all a-twitter cause I was going to see one of my bestest and oldest friends brand spanking new condo. This was her very first home purchase and consequently kinda a big whoop. Plus, I was deeply desirous of seeing the horrorshow wall paper that came with said condo. When I said it was new, know that I meant new to HER - it was, as a home, trapped somewhere in the mid-70's, decor and appliances inclusive. So I was excited about the flashback in residence form, on top of the whole 'yay for you!' aspect.
My bestest BiblioDiva, and her family were going to spend the day going mano e mano with the retrofunk spread all over the new joint, so I was going to bring them sustenance as a sympathy offering. Having been through the same procedure with my first home, it seemed karmically appropriate. But the virea had their own karma apparently, and it was totally screwing with mine. I gathered myself and bundled the infant up, ready to head out, and right when I hit the door I felt a little....urghy. Urgently urghy in fact.... Oh dear.... Um, ok, quick restroom trip and we're all good...ish... Take two on exiting the house got us successfully as far as the grocery store.
I debated. Can I do this? Can I make it through the grocery store, and through the 40 minute drive to the new pad without yorking on myself? Or worse, 'othering' on myself. I mommed up. I can DO this.
I spent several important healing moments in the grocery store restroom, and blitzkrieged the grocery aisles. Speed check up and out. I'm happy to report that I was able to make it down to her new place, deliver the food, NOT deliver any viral contaminates with said food, and get back home without embarrassing myself or others. It was a minor miracle. It was also the last time I left the house for the next 4 days.
Wednesday rolls around, and I'm feeling better. Not GREAT, mind you, but better. I'm also feeling like I perhaps ought to get back into the office. This feeling was perhaps partially triggered by my bosses response when I called in sick on Monday. 'Oh. um. ok. You have everything you need to work from home though right?'. Dude, seriously, what part of 'stomach flu' did you not get? I need to be on the crapper AND using wifi simultaneously? WTF?! So with this kinda environment you can imagine why I'm feeling like perhaps I need to hustle back in.
I toddle into the office on wed, zero appetite still, but able to eat bread and rice and other tasteless bland carbs. Luckily I still have all my morning sickness foods lying around, came in handy that. Plus side? lost 7 pounds! Healthy? um no. but still. Anyway, on my way in, I start feeling a little congested. Maybe allergies. Right? Prolly just allergies. No biggie. Wrong. Biggie.
By the end of the day, I was sneezing like a dwarf and had a regular snoterfall coming out of my nose. It totally sucked to be me. Right about 5:30 I got The Call. I was not the only one with a fever and runny nose. The Infant was snotting right along with me. Sigh...
I bundle us both up and head home, chock-a-block full of self-pity. The Hubble, and his unnaturally effective immune system was able to avoid round two of the disease-a-thon, which is a HUGE mercy - cause now it was his turn to take over all household care duties. And he did great. Credit where it is due. He took the lil stinker into her doc appointment the next day, where she was pronounced 'sick with a cold' - shocker. Apparently is went well until the full body exam at which point she became deeply unamused at the whole process. I was curled up at home during all this, whimpering, buried in a perpetually growing heap of used tissues and hating life, but still well pleased that I wasn't the one dealing with a doctor inspired Infant meltdown. During the worst of this, he kept both of us in sandwiches and formula (the first for me, the second for the Infant), and kept me entertained with movies and her entertained with ridiculous faces. She dealt with the whole thing much better than I, overall, and healed up faster as well.
We are now at the end of week 2 of the diseasing, and The Infant is pretty much back to normal, with a slightly higher amount of snot production than usual, but otherwise, no worse for wear. While I am back at work, I am still a disgusting human being. I'm making all those nasty old homeless smoker sounds in the back of my throat and snorking huge lugies every few minutes. My voice is on it's way back - I'm now more of a Kathleen Turner with allergies sort of sound vs the Hulk Hogan with a sinus infection thing I had going before. And before that it was gone altogether for 2 days. So clearly trending better. But still not 100%.
After 14 whole days of this mess. I'm hoping come next week I will be able to breathe without horking - forget dreams of Olympic Gold, I just want to be able to live snot free. Is that asking too much...?