Sick of Illness

For over a month now, my kids have been fighting one illness after another. I once had a professor in college tell an auditorium full of students that antibiotics were bad and that we had to allow our bodies to fight off illnesses on their own. Clearly this man never heard his baby whimpering at 3 AM because of a 104° fever. Having experienced this, I can clearly state that the professor in question was a tool. Actually, I believe I stated it at the time, but now it's based on empirical evidence and not the fact that the guy wore a bad 70's porn-star mustache (as opposed to good 70's porn-star mustaches, which clearly rock).

Anyway, we're back to the long stretch of illnesses that comes with kids who come into contact with other kids. For the Moose, this can be difficult, because when you talk about it, people ask if he's in day care, and then sometimes follow it with a look that says "if only you had kept him at home", which is ridiculous, because then he would just get all the illnesses at once when he started kindergarten. Instead, he will have worked through most of the major bugs, and actually attend elementary school, as his big sister does (just one sick day this school year). So those people are tools too (maybe I should have called today's entry "The Toolbox").

Typically, the rash of Winter illnesses is a list of things I'm used to dealing with. She has an ear infection. He has an ear infection. Now her ears are better, but she has strep throat. His ears are clearing up, but we think he's asthmatic, so we want him on a daily nebulizer. On and on it continues for a couple of months, and then Spring shows up, we all go outside, and everyone gets a little healthier for a while.

Well, as part of another "he has a fever" doctor's visit, the Moose got an x-ray yesterday, and the diagnosis they came back with was pneumonia, which kind of freaked me out, simply because it's a word I associate with the term "died of complications from". No one ever dies of complications from an ear infection.

So there I was, staying at home with the Moose yesterday, and I was reminded about how temporary it all was. At any moment, something could take these people away from me, be it an illness or an accident or whatever, and that would be that. I just kept looking at his big brown eyes, or hearing his laugh, and trying to appreciate that these moments are all I can count on. Just this, right now, while I've got him here and safe with me. I'm the typically busy adult, with my mind bouncing between work and the budget and this week's schedule and whatever, and it's easy for me to forget that all I really get are these moments with them, and if I don't stop to appreciate them, in the end I won't even have that.

So, what have we learned today? Appreciate those you care about while you can. Beware of bad 70's porn star mustaches and those that wear them. Oh, and try not to be a tool.

My work here is done.