Quarantine

With a house full of petri dishes,  you know it's going to happen.

Thankfully when things get passed around it's usually just a cold.
Occasionally it's something worse.  As I'm sure you can imagine, the stomach flu being passed around a large family is less than fun.  I already do a lot of laundry.  Of course I got in trouble for making a facebook comment about when my whole family gets sick and also about laundry, so I will no longer speak of such things.
For a few minutes anyway.

A couple of the kids had crossed paths with a cold recently, but thankfully nothing big and it was short lived.  Then last weekend rolled around, and of course Sam started with the cough.  He held out till Monday night when the wheezing started.  Ah, RSV my old friend.  Cue the part where I drive my husband crazy due to my paranoia.
Actually I did pretty good this time.  I guess having been through it a handful of times, including twice that landed kids in the hospital, makes me feel slightly more aware of what to watch for and when to call the dr or head in to the hospital to pull out the big guns.
Not that there are guns at the hospital.  I'm sure I could make a facebook comment about guns that would really tick people off too.

Anyway.

Tuesday rolled around and it looked like a few other kids were going down.  Only one stayed home from school.  I kept my fingers crossed.  Wednesday morning arrived (I swear that always happens after Tuesday) and two different kids were too sick to go to school.  I would have put money on one faking it, but didn't feel the need to push it just in case.  The Tuesday sickie was feeling well enough to go to school but still had a little cough hanging on, so with a dose of cough medicine, off she went.
A few hours into the day she called me telling me that she was feeling sick again and needed to come home.  I had one sleeping child, two that had been quarantined to their bedrooms and my friend's little girl who I was babysitting for a little while.  Which is why the other two weren't allowed to leave their rooms and the other kids weren't allowed to play downstairs.
I do what I can.
Because of the logistics and the timing, I began to give my oldest child the mom pep talk about how she's really ok, she can hang on for a little longer, tough it out, blah, blah, blah.  
And that's when it sounded like she either dropped the phone or was hanging up on me.
"Malia?  Malia?  Malia?!"  No answer.  Hmm.
Then her teacher picked up the phone.  Huh?
"I'm going to walk Malia down to the office, she doesn't look so good and said she needs to lie down."
Well ok.  I guess my pep talk was no good.  Some quick scrambling and out the door I went.

When I walked into the school office a few minutes later I was greeted by one of the secretaries (they all know me entirely too well at this point) who had a slightly concerned look on her face and told me "uh, she actually passed out."
Her wonderful teacher was sitting in the nurse's office with her.  He had been next to her about to walk down to the office when she fainted.  Which is nice because he caught her before she hit the floor. Then carried her to the office.  And he was kind enough to carry her out to the car for me.
I restrained myself and didn't go with the line I really wanted to say; "it's a good thing you're not a big fat guy or this would be really difficult."
We heart Emperor's New Groove in this house.

Malia spent the day sleeping it off.
I spent the rest of the day sterilizing the house from top to bottom.
One of the kids who had stayed home puked.  While sleeping.  In the top bunk.  And didn't know it.
So when I went down to check on him I was greeted with the opportunity to clean last night's dinner off his bed, his little brother's bed below him, the wall and the bunk bed ladder.  Good times.
I may never be able to stand the smell of the orange scented Clorox wipes again.

I debated keeping everyone on lock down, but had two that insisted on school on Thursday so I let them go.  Those two survived Thursday and Friday.

Ironic that those were the two puking today?  Yep.

It's Saturday night and things seem to be looking better, despite the fact that I am now finding out that practically the entire neighborhood has been sick since last weekend.
The pukers feel much better.  The laundry is getting done.  (there I go talking about sick kids and laundry again)
Only a couple of kids have lingering coughs.  Sam has held up fabulously and actually sounds wonderful, very little cough remaining and just a bit of a runny nose.  I love that he totally bucks the odds on everything he encounters.
My friend's children (including the daughters that were here this week) have stayed healthy.  PHEW!

I thought I felt something coming on when I was on the treadmill yesterday but seem to be fine today....maybe my body was just looking for an excuse to get off the treadmill.
Can I survive unscathed?
We'll see.


Who is extremely grateful this week for a washer and dryer!