THURSDAY UPDATE: Piggy Flu 2009

Allright, long story short: Amy has been feeling crummy and Babe-O has been back and forth between feverish and merely snotty. Regardless, her (Babe-O’s) spirits have been reasonably high throughout –a trooper she clearly is. Plus Amy has been awesome in taking care of the little one while letting me sleep the bejeesus out of myself on the couch as needed.

This morning, no longer satisfied with battling sick with sleep, I took a two Advil, two Mucinex, and two sinus pills before leaving for work. By lunchtime, I was downright manic and was pretty much crawling out of my skin from the drugs. And by the way, Mucinex claims to be an “expectorant and suppressant.” How the hell can it be both? If it’s doing one it isn’t doing the other.

Either way, I was pretty strung out by the time I got home and was happy to get away from the computer for a while and hang with Babe-O. We roughhoused in her playroom for a while and she was laughing like a maniac despite having a nose running so badly that even her cushy wipes were drawing blood (poor kid).

Right now, the little one is upstairs with Amy, hopefully drifting off to sleep while I get some work done downstairs before turning in early myself.

We’re still planning on seeing my Mom this weekend, so the goal is still to get us all ship shape by Saturday. We’ll see how that goes.

SUNDAY UPDATE: Piggy Flu 2009

Babe-O slept pretty well last night, or so I’m told. I slept downstairs with the cat (both dogs apparently tired of sharing a couch with me as I get more stuffed up and fidgety at night).

I barely heard a peep from upstairs until morning, when the little one was waking up. Last night we picked up a vaporizer of some kind that shot steam in the general direction of our bed, which seems to have helped everyone lucky enough to sleep in our bed.

We had breakfast and then Amy started putting together some home-made chicken noodle soup, just in case someone decides to turn our sick and snotty family into a Norman Rockwell painting.

The soup turned out awesome, so we dug in before breakfast has even settled and I’ll admit that it helped. Too bad that Babe-O wanted nothing to do with it aside from picking out pits of carrot and throwing them to the dogs.

As of lunchtime, Babe-O is clearly sick but still acting more like she has a cold and less like she has Wilbur Fever. Amy seems under the weather, but is in a good enough mood, which is an excellent sign considering that she is not known for being a trooper when sick (Childbirth? No sweat. Head cold? Watch out.).

As for me, my ongoing morning sore throat has now lasted until noon and I’ve definitely got a head cold going on. If anyone is placing bets out there, I’d give about 3:1 that the two girls are going to bounce back in the next day or so and I’m going to get hit by a dump truck driven by Porky Pig. Just a thought.

Pig flu or not, I’m expecting all three of us to be at least a little under the weather for the next couple of days. I’m hoping to medicate myself into oblivion beginning tomorrow morning, because I work in the largest office in town and if I so much as sniffle at work they’re going to roll me up in a carpet and throw me on the sidewalk. Most years there’s enough flu vaccine available to cover everyone in the company…this year not so much, for swine flu or seasonal flu.

(By the way, I love that they displaced seasonal flu vaccine production to accommodate swine flu vaccine production and now they don’t have enough of either to go around, unless the patient is 85 years old, asthmatic, and pregnant. Or works at Goldman Sachs.).

UPDATE: Piggy Flu 2009

[Warning: this post tapped out on tiny blackberry keyboard. Not responsible for poor spelling or inadvertently suggestive typos.]

This morning I woke up very disoriented because it was 9 am and very bright out...a good four hours after I usually get up. So either i'm getting a little ill myself or my body just took advantage of being able to sleep without being responsible for naby duty, as Babe-O was sleeping with Amy for the night in our bed.

When the little one woke up she was very snotty and quite warm, but in great spirits, the little trooper. Her face was all snotty and her eyes were puffy. I made her some eggs and it seemed like she was doing okay.

Now we are out running some errands and she is getting some good daytime sleep in her car seat while I sit next to her in various parking lots, writing blog posts and wishing that my blackberry had a full keyboard (hand cramps!).

At this point we are still crossing our fingers that Babe-O has a bad cold and not the gentile flu.
The doc said that If it was going to get bad it was going to get bad in the next day or so, so we'll see.

In the meantime, there is a lot of snot wiping going on. Here's a tip: skip tissues, use cloth diaper wipes. That are very kind to small noses and instead of carrying 87 wadded up disgusting tissues in your pocket, you can just carry one or two wadded up disgusting baby snot rags in your pocket. (Plus it's eco-friendly. Did you know that it takes 300 years for a disposable tissue to decompose underneath the passenger seat of your car? My lease will be up by then!)

[One final programming note: you may object to the fact that it seems at this point that Babe-O has a common cold, yet I still titled this post "Piggy Flu 2009." Please remember that (1) Babe-O's first real illness is unfolding in the context of the swine flu scare and (2) I'm competing with the 24 hour cable news cycle here, so let's get reactionary, people!]

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Gettin' piggy with it (Part II)

(continued from Part I)

The doctor checked Babe-O out, looking in her ears, nose, mouth, and elsewhere. Then, he apparently forgot his lines.

This was the part where he was supposed to say “Awww c’mon you overprotective parents, she has a cold and will be fine in a few days now get the hell out of my office.”

But that’s not what he said.

Instead, we got “mmmmm…probably 50/50” (chance of swine flu, that is).

He went on to tell us that in the next 48 hours she would either continue to have cold symptoms that would clear up in a few days OR she would get very sick, very fast – runny nose, cough, wheeze, high fever, dehydrated, inconsolable.

As of this evening, Babe-O was a little worse for the wear. She’s generally in good spirits but during her bedtime routine she ended up really upset, probably as upset as she ever gets, more than once. She definitely doesn’t feel just right.

Amy finally got her to sleep upstairs in our bed, so as not to rock the boat I am getting ready to crash out downstairs on the couch with the pets, which isn’t that bad at all.

I guess the next day or two should give us more information. Stay tuned to see how it goes.

Gettin' piggy with it (Part I)

I guess it started today at about 4 a.m. when a slightly under-the-weather Babe-O was up crying. Since she wasn’t feeling well when I put her to bed, instead of trying to soothe her back to sleep, I just brought her to our bed to sleep with Amy (who has also been feeling a little sick). The arrangement didn’t leave much room for me, so I went downstairs.

Thanks to the programmable thermostat, the downstairs is damn freezing in the middle of the night. I was only wearing gym shorts and flip flops and didn’t want to go back to our bedroom for fear of waking the baby. Lucky for me, within a few seconds, I had a big warm dog curled up on my feet. Followed by a little warm dog in the crook of my knees with her head on my back and, last but not least, a cat of unusual size sleeping on my shoulder and a good portion of my head.

Shivering solved.

Actually, I was cozy enough that I slept into the morning, blowing by gym time and only waking up a little after seven when the first school bus dieseled past the house.

A few hours later I was at the office doing whatever it is I do at the office when Amy called. The baby woke up more sick than when she went to bed and we decided to get her into the doctor. She wasn’t necessarily sick enough to take to the doctor, but if she got any worse over the weekend, we’d have to take her to Urgent Care, which at this point is probably a retail-zoned swine flu petri dish.

Luckily the doctor was able to squeeze us in, I went and picked up the girls, and we headed to the appointment.

We were only in the waiting room for a few minutes and several people came out wearing surgical masks, which I thought you only had to wear if you were either (A) in surgery or (B) a celebrity douchebag honeymooning in Mexico. Whenever I see someone wearing a surgical mask in public I’m always a little surprised that they aren’t also wearing a tin foil hat – it’s kind of an ensemble.

Not gonna lie. I’m getting a little longwinded here and this is taking way longer than it should. Going to grab some sleep now. So, as they say:

To be continued…