6 posts tagged “sick”
I'm not hating winter as much as I usually do, at least not yet. It has been very mild here which must help. We haven't been stuck in any of those odd -20F stretches with six inches of stale styrofoam snow yet. The temps just recently dropped to seasonal levels and I think that might be contributing to this new cold that I have. That I got yesterday. I was gonna at least ride the bike last night but the thought of going into the garage even with the big propane heater cranked made me ill. And my chest is all internal sore, joints stiff, and my whole face is oozing goo.
I told The Wife that I didn't like being the up front guy, the person that gets sick first. I think I just don't like getting sick period and the trend is I'm getting whatever first, thus everything is named "dad's bug". Doesn't matter. I just want to be normal. Which I don't think will happen until like July or something.
This is my first day back in gosh, I don't know how many days. A long frigging time. So long it almost verges on sabbatical-length long. I knocked off in the middle of December. While I was out, they reorganized the department, scattered my former team to the four winds, moved my desk, changed my title and job description, and plunked me down on a new team. I now sit mere steps from the elevator in an extremely small cube. Not really a cube, just a desk actually. Not even a stall.
On the homefront, The Girl got pretty darned sick. Her version of what we're calling Dad's Bug was limited to throwing up at various awkward times. She got over it like a trooper and was healthy enough to stay up until midnight on New Years Eve. She was pretty excited, and bored, and filled the time with drawing pictures. She talked me into drawing pictures of my favorite bands and then signing her name to my drawings, which was darned cute.
The Boy was doing pretty well until this morning when he woke up and jumped into our bed smelling like poop. Mom got up to change him to discover he'd hurled all over the place. This was long after he was feeling better. Mom is concerned because the ejecta looks like poop. And smells like poop. But did not come from the normal poop place. See before he'd dealt with Dad's Bug he hadn't been pooping all that much. She thinks he might have a bowel obstruction. They're headed to the doctor sometime today, still waiting to hear back. Yeah I know, very pleasant.
The Wife wound up getting sick on Sunday. Finally caught Dad's Bug. Her version was limited to the vigorous and constant pooping variety, no throwing up. And her version was mercifully quick. She was feeling better Sunday night actually and was so-so on Monday, but generally better by last night. I was glad she got sick while I was at home so I could take some of the burden and give a little TLC.
And The Squirrel. I gotta save Squirrely McSquirrel-Squirrel for the next post. That's going to be a long one.
He woke up around 3:30pm, came downstairs, and smelled like a cadaver pulled from an old Buick just pulled out of a muddy swamp. I know this smell as it's the same darned smell that I had to survive through a few days earlier.
I told him he had a dookie-booty and needed to come upstairs with me. He frowned and in a deep, growling voice said, "I'M THE KING!"
I said, "Well alright then King Dookie-Booty, let's go change your fanny."
I picked him up, took him upstairs, put him on the changing table and told him to put his hands above his head and do not move. I took mercy on him and taught him how to do the gas mask trick, the thing where you tuck your nose under the collar of your shirt. And then I got to work. It was rough.
We headed back downstairs and continued watching the James Bond marathon on Spike TV. Around the next commercial break the smell came back, and I changed him yet again. The Boy became a machine, filling his diaper just before each commercial break. I changed five diapers in an hours time. I mean with a 2 year old, most diapers are the pee kind which are pretty much a walk in the park. And since I work I don't get many of the other kind. So pretty much in an hours time I changed more poo butts than I've done in like six months time.
And not nice poo butts mind you, nasty sick poo butts. The kind that smell so bad they singe the hair off the chest of even the burliest marine.
He was in good spirits though. If you saw him you'd never know what was up. I was worried though because of my recent experience with the same bug. So after each diaper I gave him half a sippy cup of grape flavored Pedialyte. For those who don't know it's kind of like a Gatorade sort of drink for babies and kids with tummy problems.
Mom came home, I don't know, around 5:30 or so, we ate dinner, and I was pretty darned cashed and wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to see about a new lifting cage for my home gym (with a lat pulldown attachment) and also wanted to hit a bookstore to see if I could satiate my new Star Trek obsession. I also needed to make a stop at the bank. I hit the bank, was at the bookstore when my cellphone went off.
The Boy had hurled all over The Girls room. Complete disaster, please come home. So off I went.
As soon as I came in the door I took off my shirt and let the dog out before I even closed the front door. I found The Boy in the bathtub in about an inch of very nasty bathwater. Outside of The Girl's room were all manner of cleaning materials. But the amazing thing was the smell. We've all been there and we all know darned well it's rough. But surprisingly enough, this wasn't bad at all. As a matter of fact, the entire upstairs smelled kind of good. It was the grape flavoring of the Pedialyte that provided a sort of fruity, fresh scent.
The Boy had been playing in The Girl's room when he got sick. He was kind enough not to hurl on the bed or the rug or the bookshelf. What happened was he stood still, hurled at his feet, took a step back, hurled again, took another step back, hurled, and so on. Five times, all on bare floor. Really not bad at all, and the smell was quite nice.
I emptied the bathwater with The Boy in the tub, then refilled it and gave him a proper scrubdown, diapered him, put on his jammies, and handed him off to The Wife for the bedtime routine. I rounded up The Girl and we worked on a LiteBrite ice cream cone until The Wife finished up with The Boy. Then I made good my escape and headed back out to the bookstore but not before making sure everything was safe and secure.
We checked on him several times during the night and he made it through just fine, with a dry diaper in fact. He's had a little action this morning but things are becoming much more manageable than yesterday, so I'm thinking the worst is behind us. But he's still a little bit tentative. The wildcard though is The Girl. We're keeping a close eye on her, as well as The Wife.
Well the good news is just a few minutes ago I found out that what I had wasn't food poisoning, must have been a bug. Doesn't really matter, one of those six of one half dozen of the other type of things really, and that's because of the bad news.
The Wife was on the phone with one of her friends, recapping the last few days. She'd just got telling her friend that we're in the clear when The Boy walked by and hurled all over the kitchen. I checked him out, no fever, and he seems to be in good spirits. He said a bunch of times "I barfed dad, I barfed," which in spite of the circumstances was awful cute. I took him upstairs and wiped his face off with a cool washcloth and sent him on his way, under close observation.
Uh oh, he just walked by with mom saying that his tummy still hurts. And The girl just said that her tummy hurts. I wish it was summer. We could all hang out and be sick in the yard together. It's too bad things don't seem to work out that way.
So I'm not sure what did it but I got really really sick late in the evening on xmas day. I have to back up a bit to give you the whole picture. While initially none of the food I ate was all that bad, the stuff I ate later on must surely have been the killshot. I'm calling this event my Culinary Suicide Run.
Things started off on xmas eve. We were out hunting for a real xmas tree and the boy was getting tired and both girls were hungry and we happened to be near a Portillos. We stopped in, got the kids hotdogs and The Wife and I both got the famous Porty's chopped salads. I had a bite of The Boy's hotdog and it was darned good, I must say. With nothing on it that bite of hotdog may have been the best bite of hotdog that I've ever had in my entire life. Extacy ended and I got to work on my salad which was quite good.
About 3/4 of the way through I noticed I was getting a bit prematurely full. Then suddenly I felt like I was going to pass out. The Wife asked what was wrong and I think she said I looked as white as a sheet, and I quickly excused myself and ran out the front door where I paced around and regained my bearings in the cool air. Weird enough. I went back in and headed for the restroom and got dizzy on the way. On my way back to the table I noticed a small sign next to the register, something about e. coli, blah blah blah.
And that was it. Got the tree, brought it home, put it up, merry xmas to all.
Then for dinner we hit Benihana. The Wife still hasn't done major grocery shopping since getting back from the lake house so we kind of had to punt for xmas eve dinner out. Great dinner, I had the scallops. I'm still not sure what scallops are. I kind of thought they were the same thing as shrimp but when I got them they're clearly not the same as shrimp. 32 years old, father of two, married, two cars, dog, house, and I don't know the difference between a shrimp and a scallop.
Fast forward to xmas day. The Wife's family has a tradition of making what they call "cheesies"... toasted english muffins topped with a mix of velveeta and crabmeat, tossed into the broiler for a bit, served with caffein free diet coke. Only thing was The Wife forgot to get the velveeta and the english muffins. We scrapped together muffins and used con queso cheese instead of velveeta and luckily had the canned crabmeat, thus averting an xmas day disaster. Anyway, I had at least 6 of the things, washed down with 4 enormous cups of home-brewed starbucks, several xmas chocolates and more than a few xmas cookies. Then for dinner I had three slices of frozen pizza.
So there it is. I have set the stage. One might call it The Perfect Storm. The funny thing is it only for sure seems like a disaster in hindsight. I mean really for me lately to eat this much risky crap in consecutive meals is a fluke. But there you have it. Xmas day evening I rode the 'bent for only 30 minutes, came in, camped out on the couch and could not for the life of me get warm. And my belly hurt. So to top it all off, I ate a roasted almond granola bar washed down with purified water. Folks, this may have been the proverbial dinner mint. Then I went to bed.
I'll spare you the details but let's just say that between 2am and 3am central time I completely destroyed the upstairs bathroom, wreaking so much havoc that The Wife came in to assist. Destruction, terror, and mayhem. Hellfire. Brimstone. Dogs and cats, living together.
I had to get up several more times to use the bathroom and what was becoming apparent was that I was becoming extremely dehydrated very rapidly. I made it to the morning and The Wife took the kids out and got me a case of Gatorade which may have saved me from a trip to the hospital. Yeah it got that bad. The Wife said later that if I'd have lost consciousness (which I came close to doing several times), she'd have called an ambulance. I think that might have been part of what freaked me out, the thought of going to the hospital for an IV drip.
Anyway, I slept on and off yesterday until 12:30 then came downstairs, camped out on the couch until 11pm. I slept all day on and off consuming only Gatorade with copious amounts of ice. With a straw.
Really, in the end, it could have been a bad or not-quite-all-the-way-cooked scallop, a bad piece of lettuce or a nasty onion from Portillos, some nasty crabmeat from the lousy crabmeat cheesies, or just all that heinousness in the tank brewing up at the same time. Or none of it, might have been a bug. Or a curse. The good news is I'm feeling pretty good today. I took it easy in the morning, folded a bunch of laundry, took the kids to the mall around lunch, and went with the fam to dinner. But I didn't eat very much, got full really fast.
Not sure if I've got a fever but I do feel hot. I've got a lot of crap that needs to get done before the end of the week so I really can't duck out of the office. My plan is lots of piping hot green tea and minimal contact with other humans lest my grumpiness spoil someone's day.
