We interrupt this generally crafterly blog to bring you the feverish rantings of the author. Most of the family is down with this sickness so it’s been a bit odd here, I’m not even sure what day it is. Monday wasn’t so bad but that was just the beginning, mostly books in bed and keeping the energizer bunny occupied in quiet pursuits to allow her brother to sleep.
Tuesday will be known as the day of the bucket, I’ll spare you the details, poor kid. Rich and I juggled an appointment about the house, the girl’s dance lesson, and taking the boy into the doctor. Now that was surreal. When I talked to the nurse on the phone she told me to call when we arrived so that she could meet me outside with masks because of his symptoms. Masks! The boy took it in stride thankfully but I wondered what was going through the minds of the other patients as they saw us escorted up the back hall masked. Luckily we got to see the kids’ regular doctor, a nice guy with a laid back manner, curly brown hair and a comfortable smile, he reminds me of the piano-playing dog on the Muppets.
If you know him, absolutely do not tell him I said that. After checking the boy out he took off his own mask with a roll of his eyes, diagnosing strep throat. He explained that the government had mandated that masks be worn in suspected cases of H1N1, giving the poor nurses fits. Personally I think this is going a bit far, they don’t do that with regular influenza cases. This is just going to make people more afraid of H1N1. If you are a healthy person you have nothing more to fear than from an ordinary case of seasonal influenza. Down soapbox. By the time we arrived home, antibiotic in hand, Rich was going downhill fast. I still felt okay but it was going to catch up to me.
Wednesday morning I managed to make french toast and keep moving until about 10am whereupon I suddenly crashed. Fever, chills, aches, generally miserable and wimpy. The boy however was feeling a bit better. Two doses of antibiotics making a difference? Energizer bunny? Still going. Too many hours of Noggin (I really don’t like this switch to calling it Nick Jr., what was the motivation there?) The boy and I had an ongoing game to see who could throw more snotty tissues at the trashcan.
In the evening I crawled into bed unable to find a happy medium between cold sweats and raging inferno. My skin is crawling, I’m curled up under the comforter freezing, slowly blowing my brain out my nose. If you’re squeamish you might want to stop here. I’m going to tell you about my nightmare next.
Just for a bit of context I heard a snippet of a song from Oliver! the musical the other day and ended up reading the plot summary on Wikipedia. We’ve also been watching a few two many reruns of crime drama CSI:NY.
In the chill pre-dawn light, dark bluish black rough rock walls close in about the crumpled body of Nancy, late girlfriend of the evil Bill Sykes, from Charles Dickens’ novel, Oliver Twist. A voice in the background is taking note of the injuries, “numerous contusions of varying age indicate blunt force trauma to the head and torso previous to the crime as well as during the crime.” The shadowy figures of crime scene investigators reach in here and there to point out details, bag evidence and express their opinions. “She came here willingly; there are no defensive wounds.” In typical CSI:NY fashion, the crime scene investigation is punctuated with flashbacks to the actual crime. Nancy screams and pleads with Bill to let her go. But his selfish twisted soul cannot comprehend her unconditional love for him and is further angered to raging jealousy by her motherly affection for the boy, Oliver. She crumples into a ball under the blows of his heavy black boots. In his animal anger, he continues to beat her long after she has stopped moving.
Despite the fact that a significant part of my brain was quite aware that this was only a dream, I was unable to rouse myself which set me into an increasing panic. Rich eventually heard me and woke me up enough to snap out of it. Yikes, dreams on fever, not so fun.
So here I am feeding my fever with soup, ice pops, etc. That’s right isn’t it? Starve a cold, feed a fever? And blabbering in the middle of the night because I can’t sleep anyway. Time for more cough syrup possibly. I really should be keeping a chart of who got which med when.
Now into Thursday I think? Kind of a blur. The boy seems much better although still has a touch of fever. I still feel like a pin-pricked rickety old wind-blown skeleton? You see? I still have a fever, can’t quite ditch it. Energizer bunny now has a fever but you wouldn’t know it. She’s still running around, singing her songs, flitting about like normal. I made the mistake of drinking Pepsi. For some reason my addled brain thought that since it was flat, the caffeine had gone out of it? No really, I do remember thinking something along those lines, I can drink this because it’s flat. Bwahaha, what was I thinking? That’s why I’m up again at 2:45.
I can’t believe we are going to blow this whole week on a microscopic germ! Do you think the germ is thinking . . . The bigger they are, the harder they fall? Of course not, germs can’t think. I’m not that feverish. But still, it is a good lesson. “Best laid plans . . .” “Don’t count your chickens . . .” “Tomorrow . . . God willing . . . “
