Sick family

I can not believe it has been almost a full month since my last blog post.  I am having a hard time sitting down to the computer these days, I still have not fully found my "mom rhythm" since Rachel came into our lives.  On top of that our entire household got slammed with the flu.  First my dear MoG got sick, then it hit me, quickly followed by all three kids and my parents.

image credit

I will be honest to say that when my husband first stayed home I was a little irritated because it seemed more like a "man cold" to me.  I find it amazing that when the mom gets sick with a cold or anything else, she still has to make beds, do dishes, cook, do laundry, and pick up the house but when the man gets sick all he can do is connect is butt cheeks to the Lazy Boy.  But in this particular case, when the flu slammed into me 48 hours after my husband, I realized what he was feeling.  Guess God showed me for thinking cranky thoughts about my husband, HA!

The flu has been very rough on our family, we all had the flu shots, but apparently this was a different strain of the flu.  The first 48 hours was high fevers, terrible chills, and body ache like you had been at the gym for 48 hours instead of in bed.  The first 48 hours also brought on a terrible chest cough that is STILL hanging on including ear blockage for me.  Then just when you thought the bad part was over the 3rd, 4th, and 5th day of the flu brought on horrible sinus congestion.  I honestly think Davey was the one who brought it to us, because other then a cough, he was fine.  He did have a bit of a fever on Monday, which is why we kept him home to go to the doctor with the other two kids.  At the doctor both boys tested positive for flu B, they didn't bother testing Rachel.  So the doctor told us that the boys should just take fever reducer and over the counter cough/congestion medicine, and Rachel he was putting on  prescribed flu meds because it was effecting her feedings (she was barely holding down 2 bottles) and they wanted to really kick the flu bug out of her. 

So Davey was back to school by Wednesday and Rachel was doing much better and back to her normal feeding schedule by then too.  But poor Jon . . . . . he got the worst of this whole deal.  Once again the congestion went straight to Jon's ears and instead of his fevers going down they got higher.   He woke up screaming in pain in the early hours of Thursday morning and went straight to the sofa, the boy is for sure the meanest patient I have ever seen.  I want so much to hold him and sooth him, but he doesn't want anyone touching him when he is in pain, he is like a little wounded bear.  If it had been Davey, he would have been at my bedside calling my name and he would have wanted me to hold him until he was settled.  I was able to get some pain reliever in Jon and within 30 minutes he had settled down and gone back to sleep on the sofa.  BUT ever four hours it was the same thing so at 8:45 I had him in the doctors office.  Sure enough, the pressure of the congestion and infection had once again busted his ear drum.  On top of that the doctor thinks that the tubes that he just had replaced back in January, are slipping out of position, problem is he can't really tell because of all the junk in his ear with the infection.  So I plan on following up with his ENT doctor to see how things look after we get past this.  For now we are on day three of nasty junk pouring out of Jon's ear, but at least the fevers have finally passed.

I really hope the ENT can slip the tubes back into position in his office, because I don't think I can put Jon through a third surgery in less then a year for ear tubes that obviously don't seem to be working.  I mean come on, this was supposed to be a solution to his ear infections, and yet we seem to be having just as many.  On top of that they removed his adenoid too during this last surgery and that doesn't seem to have helped either.  I guess I am just a mother bear myself, I just want my little man to stop suffering with these horrible ear infections, I really worry that they will cause long term issues for him.

So for now we are beginning to mend.  David is at church today with David Jr and Rachel while I am home with Jon.  Hopefully his ear will stop draining today and I can get him back to preschool tomorrow, he is really suffering with cabin fever.  We are just ready for some super healing to happen in this household.  I need this cough to leave me so I can return to choir, we are getting ready for our Easter musical at church and I have missed most of the rehearsals at this point.  BUT, it won't do much good to return when all I can do right now is cough every other note, HA.

I hope all of your households are doing well.  Hopefully this week I can catch up and update you on some of the other things that have been happening for the past month.