Sick of Sick

Ever since I began teaching nursery two months ago, I have been sick every single week. Most of the time I also pass it along to my kids. Nothing too exotic, just run of the mill stomach flu and colds. I totally expected this and I know eventually I will have had it all. But a few weeks ago I began to whine that I was tired of having these constant minor illnesses.

And now it appears that I was taught a lesson about appreciating the relatively good health our family usually enjoys. Here is the chronology of events that I recorded two weeks ago:

Friday night Scott's cough got bad enough that he went to our doctors' walk-in clinic on the way home from work. Turns out he has bronchitis.

Saturday morning my fever got to 104 degrees and I wanted to tear out my throat each time I swallowed, so Scott drove me to the walk-in clinic. After 3 hours of waiting (IE sleeping on the love-seat in the waiting room) I found out I have strep throat.

Monday morning my face broke out in a nasty rash. Surprise! I am allergic to penicillin. My rash gets uglier by the minute (why did it have to be on my face?!) but at least my throat feels so much better. The doctor changed the prescription, so we made our 5th trip to the pharmacy this week.

Wednesday Ian's skinned-elbow (which he got at a really germy indoor playground) got little red bumps all around it. A trip to the pediatrician confirmed what I suspected -- impetigo. Ian got an enormous shot, which they said was like the consistency of peanut butter. Two nurses came in to help hold him down, but he didn't struggle or cry. But he did walk with a stiff leg all afternoon. As we left the pediatrician I texted Scott and joked that Joseph better watch his back because everyone had been stricken with something fancy but him. But I forgot to knock on wood, so...

Thursday morning Joseph showed me an ouchie on his foot -- it was twice as big as the day before and had tiny red lines streaking away from it. Another trip to the pediatrician, and this time the diagnosis was a Staph infection. No shot for him, but he joined the rest of the family in rounds of antibiotics.

It was an insane streak of illness. Now that we are all on antibiotics, we should be impervious to further illness, right? Unless during one of our eleven (literally, eleven) trips to the Kroger pharmacy this week we picked up a virus... but definately one benefit of being sick at the same time and all taking antibiotics was the Scott and I could kiss as much as we wanted without worrying about getting the other sick. Plus, the kids were spared our illness because they were also on antibiotics. Silver lining, right?

Update: We are healthy again! No one shared illnesses (phew!) and we only have a few days left on our antibiotics (we were no longer contagious after 24 hours on antibiotics, but we stayed quarantined for almost a week) We've actually started venturing out of the house and interacting with human beings other than our doctors. Hooray!

We were pretty sleep deprived that week.

The upside is that we spent a lot of time sampling new

popsicles. 

While wearing bedhead.