Although I’m fully recovered from my flu (for now), everyone around me is sick. I mean real sick. Co-workers, friends and family. Mike has been down with the full blown stuff, chest, cough, fever since Wednesday night. I’m here at my parents again trying to keep Liam and myself quarantined since I currently have no sick days left and don’t want to catch anything that will force me to have to go to work sick or stay at home with unpaid leave. I was supposed to go to Tulsa today for a workshop but my poor mom, who has already had the tummy flu twice, has now caught the other kind of flu or something of its kind we don’t really know yet, all we know is that she’s not well. We spent a frantic fifteen minutes this morning right before I was supposed to leave trying to figure out whether I should use my last family sick leave to stay at home since I really hated the thought of her taking care of Liam all day feeling the way she did. I felt guilty no matter what decision I came close to choosing. Staying home might make me look bad at work. Going would leave my mom under strain. Me staying would then make my mom feel guilty for being in a condition that would warrant me missing work. So then she would back out insisting she’d be fine. One look at her expression would tell me the exact opposite. Round and round we go. My dad, bless him, insisted that he could handle it, which I’m sure he could, but I know my mom and I know that if I wasn’t around and dad was left alone with Liam she wouldn’t rest like a good patient, she would be up and about helping.

So, I stayed at home, which turned out to be the right choice in the end since I just put Liam to bed with a 101 degree fever. He’s been out of sorts ever since he woke up this morning and went through several crying fits throughout the day. I’m hoping his symptoms are of the simple teething pain/bubbles in the tummy sort of stuff because Mike and I have worked very hard to try and keep him away from all the flu people so he doesn’t have to go through that kind of discomfort. I don’t know. We should probably just give up and hope that as one family member begins to feel bad, another will begin to feel better and somewhere out there they’ll be somebody to take care of our son in the meantime.

It never occurred to me until today how lost I’d be without my parents. It really got me thinking. For one thing, I’m not aware of my dad ever staying home from work to take care of Mitch and I when my mom got sick. She didn’t get “sick leave” from being a stay-at-home mom. So, as the working person in the house, imagining myself in a situation where I didn’t have my parents close by like this, do I get to say “Eeek, Mike, fever of 102. Man. That must suck. And that cough sounds horrible, hope you don’t end up with bronchitis again. Well. I’m off to work.”

Yeah, right. I mean, this is precisely the reason I did stay at home today. Parenting is changing for the better in someways at least. I’d be willing to bet if the tables were turned, Mike would stay home for me. I was faced with a situation where I could either leave my son at home with sick people, making things hard on them and risking the health of my child or stay at home and take responsibility for my child (no stranger or non-family member will be babysitting Liam until he’s able to talk…so alternative childcare is not an option…you should hear some of the horror stories I’ve heard). Yes, it was my last family sick. Oh well. We’ll just have to hope that March will bring with it a fresh breeze that will wipe away all the sickness in this town. As for all the headbanging at city hall? Who knows how long that will go on.

Fun stuff.

I’m up. Feel a little qweezy but I’m coming .

I responded:

You’re a dork - sending me emails from bed. I start getting breakfast orders from your iPhone I’m taking it away.

Since having Liam, I’ve been more worried when flu season comes around. It’s easy to catch stuff working a service desk at a public library. People come in sneezing, coughing, blowing their noses. Then they touch our books, use our computers, type on our keyboards. I have a bottle of Germ-X on my desk and have been particularly OCD about using it lately.

However, by last week I started to get the feeling I wasn’t going to be able to avoid the flu much longer. I had already been getting these random symptoms, that head fever headache feel but it would just never quite develop into anything. In the end, it happened so often that I put it down to allergies even though I’m not usually prone to allergies. But last week several staff members were out with the flu, and Wednesday night a teenager puked next to one of the public computers while I was at work. Then on Saturday, I played a volleyball tournament in Ochelata where someone’s kid puked in the gym. Here we were, in a contained building, with everyone sweating and passing around the same ball. At that point, I knew it was only a matter of time. Sure enough, early Monday morning, the Norovirus made it’s first appearance in my toilet bowl. I ran into the bedroom, woke Mike up to tell him that I was heading over to Mom and Dads for “quarantine”…and here is where I’ve been. I haven’t seen my baby in two days. I don’t think I’ve ever been away from him this long. I’m going nuts.

Thankfully, the worst of it is over although I do feel incredibly weak and woozy when standing. I’m also glad to report that Mike and Liam are still symptom free but just to be sure, I’m spending another night at my parents. By tomorrow, it will have been more than 48 hours since I’ve had contact with Liam. I miss him like crazy. I know I’ve already said that but I’m saying it again for emphasis.

Here’s a video of Liam rolling dice during Mike’s gaming session yesterday.