Well!

Did he pull the fire alarm? (no, that would be my 25-year-old back in the day). Did he have a fever? (No apparently, he just wasn’t “himself”).

And 24 hours later, after being tested for pig flu, he appeared ready to go back to school… Until tonight.
When the fever hit 102.5 and any mother worth her weight knew something was wrong.

But what’s wrong? Well, I don’t know that. Tomorrow may tell. Meanwhile, I offer up the advice of popping the vitamin C if you’ve got it, and donning the surgical mask if you can find it.

And if anyone winds up sick, be prepared for the greatest concern, made perfectly clear by Mr. Sick:

“Can I still go trick or treat?”

-Liz

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Before we go any further, I think it’s important for me to point to the fact that I realize the seriousness of this outbreak. But I refuse to give it power over my life.  But I digress.

Oddly enough, after my super-secret assignment to places I can’t tell you about, I got sick, too. Same thing as my daughter for the most part. But I never let myself consider that it was that pesky pig flu.

In fact, I’ve exerted much effort to keep pig flu on the back burner of my mind.

Oh, sure, I’ve been hearing the heart-wrenching reports of deaths of children (I can’t even go there, folks) and that this virus is going more viral that a video on YouTube, but I’d really rather not give this thing any more attention than I have to.

Which worked to a certain extent. At least until I met my parents for lunch on Friday and Mom pulled out the hand sanitizer immediately after sitting down at the table. Then again after getting soup. Then again after getting food. Then again as we left. And we were encouraged – ok, forced – to follow suit the whole time.

As we left, Dad made one of his usual snide remarks about the restaurant owner demanding payment for a new bottle of “Germ Be Gone” they’d need to replace the one we’d just used up but I had to wonder how much truth was found in his joke… After all, I’d seen my mother use more than one pump of sanitizer at a time…

I guess the fact that my dad was preparing to take my brother to his office to re-test for the porky virus played no small part in Mom’s paranoia. And to bring things full circle, my brother does in fact have pig flu.

It would appear the neighbor in my carriage house does as well. Our dear friends across the street had it, too. Every member of the family, in fact – except for the mom. Wow. Who coulda seen that one coming…

I guess all this is to say that there is really no rhyme or reason as to who gets it and why – as to whether the vaccine will work, or not. And we have a couple of choices here.

We can live in fear. Or not. We can take every precaution known to man and get the pig flu. Or do nothing and exit unscathed.

Let’s not be afraid, though, ok? Let’s just live and be the best we can be.

And as Halloween approaches, if you haven’t already narrowed down your costume of choice, pig costumes should be readily available. I think you know what I’d suggest…

-Liz

Enjoy your Coffee Break!

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I ladled out soup for the rest of us, then returned to the family room for dinner around the TV (it was the  weekend – back off). About   five minutes later, a scratchy little voice said, “Can I have some of your soup?”

“Of course you can honey.”

Talk about a regrettable decision…

Because in no time  she was shivering with a nice  case of the chills. By the next morning, her status hadn’t improved and we were in the midst of a holiday weekend. Luckily, there’s a doctor in the family.

Or maybe that wasn’t so lucky after all. Because the first thing I heard after an on-the-spot, out-of-office check-up was swine flu.

“What?!? Impossible!!”

Or was it? Maybe all the hype wasn’t hype afterall. And if it wasn’t hype – and was pig flu, I’d eaten after her, putting myself in jeopardy as well. I don’t know what was worse – the possibility of pig flu, or the fact that the holiday weekend would mean a definitive diagnosis was three days away.

After my momentary (and severe) attack of panic, I decided to take a proactive stance, sterilizing everything I could get my hands on – pillows, blankets, dishes – you name it. Then I got out the disinfectant spray, leaving no surface untouched.

I decided maybe I could do my own diagnosing as well.

I looked for obvious signs – the corkscrew tail, the flat round nose. Nothing.

I asked her if she had any desire to root around in a mud hole. Negative.

With that, I decided it was no longer worth my unfounded panic – we’d wait it out, hope for the best, and pop Vitamin C like it was going out of style.

Thankfully, it turns out it’s not pig flu. I’ve learned a thing or two along the way. Namely, no one will be stealing a drink from my glass or a bite of food from my plate, no matter how pathetic they look.

And I’ll need a few more cans of disinfectant spray, because flu season is still a month away.

-Liz

Enjoy your Coffee Break.

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