...at least that particular HBO special is what our house resembled over the past week and a half only with barnyard flu instead of AIDS.
First, I came down with a wicked cough that simply would not go away. I never felt really ill. I was simply hacking my guts out and coughing up shit I could use to re-tuckpoint my brick house. I didn't really think it was anything but a cold or a version of the same chest problem I get every single winter. Normally I keep it to myself and don't pass it along. This was different.
My daughter got it. She started coughing and immediately. And when I say that my daughter is a "bad cougher" I'm understating things. The slightest tickle in her throat throws her into violent, spasm-like fits that almost always result in her tossing her lunch. In the week that she's had a cough, she's barfed on her bed once, her pillows three times, herself at least twice, my wife ...oh, and the floor this morning. The first time it happened, I wanted her to get more sleep, but there's just something about the smell of hot vomit in a 2-year-old's bedroom that screams "clean/change the sheets before sleeping". So while we changed her bedding, she went downstairs and she got to watch cartoons for a spell before going back to bed...this time without incident. But of course, her being the devil and all, she threw tact to the wind and used her illness to scam us for the three nights after, screaming from her room that she had "puked in her bed...DADDY!" only to find out that she had not barfed and simply wanted to come downstairs to watch TV again. It's amazing how some children are destined to be con artists from birth and how easily they can take a seemingly menacing situation like dehydration and "killer flu" and use it to acquire things as banal as tootsie rolls and additional tv time.
After my daughter got it, then my wife started to cough a little bit. I swear, it's like Captain Trips from King's "The Stand". One person coughs and it's all over...within days everyone has it. Anyway, my wife's infection seemed fairly innocuous at first. Then my oldest got ill. Now, my son doesn't GET ill. He's the model of health. Kid could swim naked in sewage for an afternoon and not get so much as a rash. But this sucker put him in a wicked state for a couple days...one morning resulting in a 103.5 temperature and a trip to the clinic to see the pediatrician. He was so feverish and hopped up on Tamiflu, Motrin and Tylenol that his eyes were glazed over. It takes a lot to slow him down but for 2 whole days he walked around looking like an extra from 28 Days Later.
Then my wife's infection got a little worse. She started to get really achey and lethargic. She was easily winded and dizzy. She was having a hard time handling all of the children (they were home due to the infection and the fact that the daycare was closed). But all the while she had been breast feeding our newborn, hoping that the anti-bodies she was producing would pass through and save him from having to deal with the fever and/or cough that the rest of us had experienced. (This, in and of itself, is going to get her into heaven if there is one. I can't imagine how shitty it must have been being sick with the flu and having to get up 4 times a night to feed a baby). Well, our luck continued for a day or so. But ultimately, Ollie came down with a fever and we were forced to take him to the clinic as well. He's now on infant Tylenol. Between the schedules for Tylenol, Motrin, Tamiflu and Delsym, our house is a model of personal medical organization. And it seems as though we've personally kept the Thera-flu and Vicks stocks afloat.
So now each person in my house is in varying stages of swine hell. I'm the closest to getting over it and am still hacking and my newborn son is so stuffed up he sounds like a turbo-diesel. We've spent the last three days indoors with little more than a faint glimpse of actual sunlight and it's going to be a while until we're all in game shape again. But I'm thankful that, as of today, we haven't been faced with any of the really serious breathing issues with anyone. It seems as though we might make it through this after all (knocking on each and every piece of wood in my office).
So what am I to take from this experience? Well, for starters I would direct some advice at those people who are skeptical of the safety of the vaccine. Let me put it this way...you may be leery of it but there are no empirical or real-life studies to lend any credence to your skepticism. On the other hand, I can tell you from personal experience that this virus certainly sucks ass and, in it's worse form, might kill you and your family. I'm no genius, but common sense tells me that GETTING the shot and avoiding possible death outweighs one's "gut feeling" that the vaccine MIGHT be dangerous. Besides, who the hell wants to spend any time at all at the clinic, what with all those people coughing and snorting and smelling of lysol and vomit?
So, just freakin' do it ya' hippy. You'll thank us guinea pigs later.
