January...the Non-Month, Flu and Punxsutawney Phil

A friend of mine who has been sick about as much of January as I have been, verbalized yesterday what I have been thinking for a couple of weeks. Yesterday started her New Year. Mine too! In fact, I need to keep this in mind as in the last three years, January has SUCKED for lack of a better term. Truly it has! In the last three years, in January I have been horribly sick at least two weeks of the month and everyone else in the house has followed suit. Throw in ER trips and last year, multiple hospital stays with David and I am of the mind that January should just be a non-month in our house. Next year I  believe my family and I will just hibernate through January and start 2016 in February! Sounds like a plan to me.

This years flu has been particularly nasty and it really doesn't want to let go. Even after all this time, I can still overdue and find myself in bed with a nasty headache, nausea and fever. I am at the place where I feel good enough to do stuff (in fact stuff is driving me crazy), but shortly my body will send out warning signs that I must rest. Because of this, my sleep patterns are off due to the uncharacteristic naps I feel I must take......and I am still working my way back to actual eating. I can tell everyday that I am getting better, but it is simply not fast enough. My last go round in the ER I heard the doctor tell another patient that with relapses and recovery time, this stupid flu is taking a full month to six weeks to get over. Uggggghhhhhh! I am at the 4.5 week mark so I should be feeling ALOT better soon....right?!

All this being said, I am ready for spring. I am ready to throw open my windows and let fresh air in the house. I am also ready to clean like a fiend to kill any residual germs that are still calling my house their home! The weather teased us a bit last week and gave me a couple of days of open window time, but not nearly enough. I am ready for laundry on the line, curtains billowing in the breeze and the smell of freshly cut grass wafting through the air. Sadly, according to that damn groundhog, I have six more weeks to wait for spring. Stupid rodent!

Well there you have it. I hate winter, flu and January. Apparently I am not alone. I am also not too terribly fond of that darn groundhog Punxsutawney Phil! Of course he is going to see his shadow. He's FAT! That being said, I will take his prediction as a positive and give myself six more weeks to completely recover. By then.....hopefully January will be nothing more than a distant memory.

Happy Groundhog Day everyone!!!!!

'Tis the Season

I love this time of year. It is so full of promise. The holidays have been survived as has the first half of the school year. Just a few weeks of cold, maybe a sprinkling of snow and then it will be spring. I can practically hear the birds chirping and see the sun shining in my fantasy of this bright new year. It all looked so cheery and bright until.....the first sneeze from upstairs. It was quickly followed by the coughing bout from the basement that could be heard all over the house. Finally, I hear the mad dash up the stairs into the bathroom, toilet lid thrown up, and then I realized......the only thing different about 2015 as opposed to 2014 is....the flu finally found us. Sigh.....it took them all at once. Double sigh.....

In all fairness, I'm really not that surprised. I mean after all....it was bound to happen as many trips as we have made to the ER in the last couple of weeks. On our last trip, you could practically see the germs partying in the waiting room. There was a collection of hacky coughs, runny everything and people hovering over trash cans and puke basins. I grabbed masks and bathed both myself and David in hand sanitizer, but I felt even those measures where no match for the germ warfare going on in that small space. Then there is also the fact that Z and his lady love are constantly out and about, never thinking about what communicable disease might be hiding in every crack and crevice of life. While they have been brought up in a germ conscious society, at 18 are they really thinking about getting sick when they share food, drink and God knows what else? Of course not! Bottom line is.....all our bodies are probably fertile breeding grounds for everything from the flu to the plague, so really there is no shock that this targeted us. The only real surprise is..... that it took this long.

As I type this, the sounds of coughing, sneezing and the occasional whimper or hurried foot steps to the bathroom are what fill the quiet of my night. I find it difficult to close my eyes for fear that I will be jolted awake by the sound of my name being sickly yelled out to run bring aspirin, a drink or God forbid.....clean up a bathroom. I also do little sleeping with David sick down the hall. I fear him throwing up in his sleep as he sleeps mostly on his back. We have already been down the aspiration road and I don't wish to travel that path again.

I guess I really shouldn't complain. It has been a couple of years since the flu bug really hit my house full force. Last time I was one of the casualties and it took me forever to find my way back to 100%. This year I hope to stay well....at least until everyone else gets it out of their system. It is very hard to take care of others when you feel like warmed over death yourself. Not to fear though....I have brought in an arsenal of Lysol, Clorox wipes, Gatorade, ginger ale and vitamin C. This house isn't going down without a fight.

So as I lay here, praying that the worst is over soon, I think of spring days, warm breezes and anything that doesn't sound like someone puking! 

Happy Monday everyone!!!