one flu over the cuckoo’s nest

The Lost Week between Christmas and New Years is usually pretty uneventful for me. I typically spend most of those days finding places for all the new crap my family has taken in and coming down from the holiday high. However, this year, the Lost Week was more like the beginning of the movie Outbreak. 

Patient Zero

I have to assume that it was Evie. The child licks handrails like she’s a Michelin Star Inspector of metal pipes, even though she is 5 and completely understands the reality of germs. She came down with a cough a couple days before Christmas. An annoying cough that interjected sentences and interrupted sleep. But that’s all. The source is really unknown. It could have been from hanging out with her friend…or the licking of handrails. Regardless of the germ origination, Evie was Patient Zero in the epidemic virus that attacked almost my entire household.

Patient One, then Two

Like I said, it started off with Evie and a cough. No fever. Just an annoying, persistent little cough… a little like her personality (I joke…. but also, serious). Everyone was fine except her and then a day or two after Christmas, Marina came down with a fever. Just a low one. Nothing serious, no cough, but my normally agreeable child was crabby. Her being a pain in the ass, typical of children this age, made me appreciate even more how easy-going she usually is. 

I think Marina used her telepathy powers (not confirmed but is believed to be truth in my household) to inject the virus into me. As soon as she got sick, I got hit as well. 

I’d like to preface this with the fact that I pretty much never get sick. Like EVER. Aside from a cough that comes with some stupid thing called “Non-Allergic Rhinitis“, I don’t get sick. If the house gets sick, I am somehow the only one that stays upright. But for some reason, my bad ass motherfuckerness did not fight off whatever this virus was. Once Marina got sick, I started feeling the aches. I had gotten up at 4:30 that morning to get stuff done but as the sun began to rise in the sky, I realized my ass needed to lay back down. So, I did. I NEVER DO THIS. My body is never horizontal after 6AM. 

For reasons still unknown to me, my husband decided to lie down next to me. I don’t know if he was trying to keep me company or if he had sympathy aches but at that point in time, he was TOTALLY FINE. Yet he chose to lay in bed with me for hours that day, auditioning for Patient Three, as the two other sick children went in and out of our bedroom. I lay there feeling like a concrete mixer truck hit me, all while listening to whatever goddamn cartoons were on the television to appease the kids that went in and out of my bedroom.

At that point. I just wanted silence…and maybe a breakfast sandwich. 

I didn’t say anything though. I don’t know why, and looking back it’s my fault for not kicking him and the children out. I suffered in mildly irritated silence, delirious and unsure of time. 

Patient Three, then Four

Of course, later on that day and into the night Vince also got sick. That’s what you get for LAYING NEXT TO A SICK PERSON!! Gianna also started feeling sick because she had been the one out in the living room watching the two other sick kids as my husband gave me the comfort of his presence in bed. 

The days after I caught the virus are somewhat of a blur. I didn’t brush my teeth till 2:00 p.m. those days. My younger kids spent their entire day in pajamas, which included walks in public to our mailbox when my Theraflu cold medicine kicked in. Yes, despite being pulled under a moving train, my Type A personality would not let me sit for long. Sitting or lying down wasn’t really relaxing anyway (see Day 1 of my sickness) ….so I figured I might as well be productive while under the influence of Acetaminophen.

Instead of letting my body rest, I totally de-Christmas-fied my house and did all of the other things Moms typically do – except for making dinner. I don’t think I made food that week.  Maybe I did…but if so, it was in no way edible. It’s a blur now. I do recall realizing in the days of sickness that it would be so nice to have an assisted living person…for the family of Moms. My house doesn’t really function without me. I just wanted someone to come over, be me for a few days, taking care of laundry and the sickness fluids (see below), while I lay in bed, sucking down Theraflu and binge-watching Emily in Paris. 

The Sickness Fluids

[First off, let me just say that the word fluid is kind of on par with the word moist. They are both pretty cringey.]

Those days while my house was virused were a hot mess of various fluids. Night sweats by me, vomit from Marina when she woke up in the middle of the night, diarrhea also from Marina on my bedroom (carpeted) floor because she had no idea what diarrhea was and thought she just had to fart. We couldn’t even be mad because she was so sad that it happened.

Boogers and boogers and boogers and snot.

Boogers and boogers and snot.

Phlegm. 

Piles of one-used tissues placed around the house because my child doesn’t understand the fold and double use tactic nor the idea of the garbage can.

It’s just so gross.

To top it off, I got my period in the middle of all it as if I wasn’t feeling like I’d been flogged to death already. The older two girls were in shock because apparently, they thought I had already made it through menopause. What in the actual hell?! I’m 43 and I just pushed out a baby 2 years ago.

These kids are dicks.

The Lesson

Now that I’m out of the sickness haze and can think like a functioning human again, I realize two things. One, I’m freaking productive when I’m not dying of the flu. I think of all the things I didn’t do during those 8 or so days and it starkly contrasts with my normal life.  

And conversely two, I realize I need to slow down sometimes.

One of those afternoons, while feeling zombie-like, I joined Evie on the couch as she watched some YouTube Kids smut on TV. I lifted her up and snuggled underneath her, her body weight acting like a small, warm human blanket. And I hugged her. I sat and hugged her. And I realized I never do this. Just pause and be with her. Not doing anything. Not making crafts. Not playing a game or cleaning up her mess as she plays like a tornado throughout the house. Just being. And I think she realized that too because she didn’t say a word. She didn’t squirm or move. She just was.

This moment was special. A moment I wouldn’t have had if my body hadn’t, for once, forced me to stop.