Sick Week

So, I’ve been quite sick this week. Probably the most sick I’ve been since we got married (except morning sickness, which is always awful just because it lasts for months). Since Saturday a week ago I’ve had a cough, soar throat, an earache, soar muscles, I’ve been extremely tired, had trouble sleeping (several nights because I’d wake up freezing and not be able to go back to sleep, and one night I think because I took Sudafed right before bed and it kept me up for hours), congestion, chills, fever, headaches when I turn my head, dizziness when walking around the house (I’d never had that before), swollen lymph nodes, a few times I’ve felt nauseated because of headaches, lack of appetite, and I lost my sense of taste and smell for a few days. I’m not totally over it yet, but seem to be headed that direction. I kept thinking all week that I’d be getting better, but then would be worse again in the evenings. I went to the doctor (I never go to the doctor) because I thought I might have an ear infection, but he said it was a sinus infection. I never get sick – I think moms should be exempt from ever getting really sick, because kids still have to be taken care of during the day whether mom’s sick or not. Luckily Michael’s been great – coming home after work and making late dinners while I rested, and making sure I keep up on taking medicine (I keep thinking I must be getting better, so I stop taking the Tylenol and ibuprofen, and then it wears off and I realize I’m not over it yet). But, it seems that I’m getting better now, finally. Yesterday I had an awful headache for a few hours in the afternoon that didn’t go away with Tylenol, but other than that I’ve mostly just got this cough and my soar throat is hurting less every day. I’ve gone through a lot of cough drops this week – on Sunday I had to go out in the hallway three different times at church because I just couldn’t stop coughing. Oh well.

Michael came home yesterday not feeling well – just really tired, and cold. He said he felt better after taking a warm shower last night, so I hope he doesn’t get sick today. (A sinus infection shouldn’t really be contagious). We need at least a little while of everyone being healthy to recover – we haven’t had one full week of no one in the house being sick since Christmas. Often our family will get sick once in the winter – it will run through everyone, and then that’s it, other than the normal runny noses and little coughs that are ever-present in a house full of small children in the winter months. But this winter the entire family has gotten sick, then it’s continued and we’ve been sick again. I’m ready for winter to be over. It seems like lots of our friends from church have been sick this winter too. I told Michael that’s just one more reason to move to a warm climate – we’re never as sick in the summertime as in the wintertime. I even had to miss out on the monthly Ladies’ Night Out that I organize because I was just too sick to go.

But we need to get healthy so we can catch up on life. The boys haven’t done their chores since I’ve been sick, so we now need to catch up on folding laundry, vacuuming, and cleaning the bathrooms. We need to go grocery shopping for ingredients for dinners – I went shopping last week with 4 of the boys, and I was just in a cloud – couldn’t think for the life of me, so I ended up just getting some things on my grocery list, but not really getting much in the way of dinner ingredients at all – then that was the day I went to the doctor and when I got there they said I had a fever – no wonder I wasn’t feeling well enough to think straight at the grocery store. And Eli’s birthday party is this weekend – he’s excited for that. I asked him who he wanted to invite, and he proceeded to name (from memory) 14 of the 15 kids in his school class, and another 7 kids from church. We cut the list down to about 12 kids, which seems to be the number we can handle at our house once the boys get old enough to start inviting their friends to come and stay without their families. Eli wanted a Dr. Seuss party, so I guess I now need to get ready to decorate a cake with Horton the Elephant – we’ll see how that goes. Plus Eli’s “star student” week at school is next week, so we need to prepare a special poster all about Eli, and I get to go in and read his favorite book to the class one day. And with Valentine’s Day coming up in a couple weeks we picked up some Valentines and this morning I helped Eli convert a cereal box into a “Valentines Mailbox” for his cards at school. Oh, and Courtland’s 2nd birthday is coming up pretty soon too, so I guess I’d better get on the ball and send out his invitations.

And the annual Daddy-Daughter Night for the ‘activity days’ girls I teach at church is coming up this week. I’ve come up with ideas for a few group games that I think should be quite fun. I need to get the supplies ready for those games, and probably need to figure out some kind of refreshments – since I lost last week to being sick, I keep having to remind myself to get working on these things, since that’s coming up tomorrow night. But tonight I’m working at the family history center, and tomorrow morning Kolby has a doctor’s appointment. Then next week Michael has his annual National Dermatology Conference in New Orleans. Wish I was going, but we couldn’t really afford a babysitter or extra plane tickets. Michael just found out the conference next year is in San Diego – only about 4 months before we’ll be planning on moving down there. That’d be a perfect time to start house hunting, except for the fact that we probably won’t be able to afford for all of us to go out there then, especially with all the expenses of moving coming up so soon. We’ll see.


Well, hope you are all doing well – and staying healthy. :)