Sick Day Time Line

I’m beginning to believe that this Fall may go down in our family annals as The Autumn that Zany Mama Caught Every Virus, Bug, and/or Infection that was present in Central Ohio. Seriously, I have been sick more in the past six weeks than in the past three years combined.

Case in point, I was really sick - and Zane was mildly sick – yesterday. Having little other blog fodder, I thought it might be sort of fun to give an overview of the ridiculous day we spent together. (Disclaimer: This post was conceptualized in my fevered brain yesterday and may contain many tangents, irrelevancies, and outright lies.)

7:03am
Zane wakes me up by hovering over my face and saying “Good morning, Mama!” with his freshest morning breath. It’s at this moment that I realize we have a problem. My sore throat from the night before has progressed to a screaming pain throughout my nose, throat, and ears and it was accompanied by body aches that have even my toes hurting.

I convince Zane to go back to sleep in my arms for a while so that I can get a few more minutes of sleep.

7:32am
Sleeping party is over. Zane wants to get up for the day NOW, NOW, NOW. I unhappily oblige.

On top of the soreness, my throat feels like it’s coated in peanut butter and jelly – a goober if you will. Although it’s highly unlikely that anything resembling peanut butter and jelly has been in my gullet for the past three years because 1) Zane is violently allergic to peanuts, so we don’t have any peanut products in the house and 2) I haven’t been able to find a good jelly in forever.

(I am, unsurprisingly, quite picky when it comes to jellies. I only really like cherry jelly or jam – I’m not a big fan of preserves or marmalades – and it’s hard to find one that isn’t overly sweet. The moment I find one that is satisfactory, the company stops making it. My attention is the death knell for all good cherry jellies everywhere).

8:05am
My brilliant partner, SRH, finds a stash of Hall’s Cough Drops for me.

8:45am
The aforementioned brilliant partner leaves for work. I have a moment of panic as I realize that my barely conscious self is responsible for the care of a sick preschooler for the rest of the day.

(This is not unlike the panic I felt when we brought Zane home from the hospital. I just couldn’t believe that they thought we were nearly responsible enough to have the care and upkeep of an obviously vulnerable young child. Today, however, I feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of keeping us both alive. Have I mentioned that I felt like dying at this point?)

8:47am
Zane realizes that he has misplaced the “coal” that goes in one of the freight cars on his train. I look for it everywhere amidst cries of, Where coal? Where coal? He’s crying, and I’m about to cry as I drag my poor body all over the house looking for a 1x3 inch piece of black plastic. (After looking off and on all day, I never do find it.)

9:03am
I settle onto a heating pad to combat the chills and body aches. Soft, defeated cries of Where Coal continue in the background for the next 54 minutes.

It occurs to me that perhaps the extreme pain in my joints is akin to having been tortured on the rack. I mean, I really don’t know having never uttered such heresies as the earth revolves around the sun or other such nonsense in the presence of English clerics, but I think the pain might be similar.

9:44am
Second breakfast: Zane sits on my tummy and eats cold Wendy’s chili.

10:15am
I call my mother to beg for relief. I believe I actually said on her machine, I think I’m dying. That is, if a sore throat and body aches can kill you. Because if it can, I’m definitely dying. Can you come over for lunch please?

10:48am
Mom calls me back and says that she’ll be over at lunch to help me out.

(As I was very sick as a young child – with a condition which was remedied by surgery when I was 3- my mother is a bit over-the-top when I’m even slightly ill. I can hear the anxiety in her voice and I retract my comments about being on death’s door. It’s cool to be dramatic, but you don’t want to worry your mother unnecessarily.)

Mom promises to be at the house with lunch for Zane at 11:30. I start counting the minutes until she gets here.

11:42am
Mom shows up – apparently, she’s not as worried about me as I’d hoped…um…I mean…thought.

11:44am
I take a shower in water at the hottest level I can tolerate. It does help the body aches and chills, but I keep bumping up against the shower curtain which feels like cold pitchforks against my skin in my fevered state.

(At this point, I’m wishing that I’d thought to bring a stool in with me so that I can sit down for a while. This, of course, reminds me of when I came home after Zane was born and I couldn’t walk – yes, I know that old story again. But what I was really referring to was how SRH would turn over a bucket and put a towel on it so that I could sit down in the shower so that he wouldn’t have to go in with me and hold me up. A few weeks later we graduated to a Rubbermaid stool – which was ever so much more dignified.)

12pm
I’m done. Mom watches Zane as I head to bed for a nap.

1:04pm
Zane joins me for a nap as my mom heads back to work.

2:07pm
Zane wakes up. I longingly remember the 2-3 hour naps of days gone by. I beg, plead, and cajole, but Zane’s not interested in watching a video in bed so that I can sleep some more, so we head downstairs.

2:23pm
Zane is interested in watching a video now. I can’t take back my offer, and truthfully, I’m inordinately grateful to the TV for taking the heat off me for a few minutes. (Shameful, I know. But what is a blog, if not a place for unabashed self-confession?)

3:37pm
I’m strangely disappointed when Zane decides to turn off Stuart Little 2 before the big airplane finale. Cue up more train videos.

3:42pm
I call SRH and try to keep the desperation out of my voice as I request that he be home as close to 5pm as possible.

4:15pm
Hey, what do you know? I can actually sit up now for 5 minutes at a time without horrific pain in my hips and back. I begin to believe that I might actually make it out to the other side of this illness.

4:42pm
SRH gets home – what a dear, dear man.

5:12pm
I go to take another blazing hot shower. This time, I am not proud. I ask SRH to bring me the stool – which has inexplicably disappeared from our bathroom. He can’t find it either, so he pinch hits with this:

I’m a little uneasy because I seem to remember that there is a weight limit of 90 pounds for this particular chair. And while I’m not a big person, I don’t think I’ve been that weight since the 6^th grade. But hey, I haven’t eaten anything all day – which means I’m closer to 90 pounds than I was yesterday – plus my judgment is clearly clouded by fatigue and discomfort, so I go ahead and sit down.

Thankfully, no drama results.

6:09pm
I head to bed for the night.

(I do manage to get up for about an hour around 9:30pm – you know, to make sure things are set for the next day and to check my blog and stuff. I have priorities.)

So there it is – my thrilling sick day. More information about someone else's day of illness than you ever wanted to know.

For the record, I’m feeling much better today. but Zane seems to be feeling a little worse – probably due to the abject neglect he experienced yesterday.