Happy freakin’ Holidays
05 January 2004
What you are about to read is true. No part of this story has been embellished for entertainment purposes. Our story begins Christmas day. The kids (Noah, 4 yrs. old and Jack 20 months) opened their presents and we were all relaxing. As the morning wore on Jack started dragging. He had a fever and just wanted to be held. We figured since it was Christmas day and the only way he was going to see a doctor was the emergency room we’d wait until the the 26th. No big deal, since he wasn’t really doing too bad. The next day Sarah took jack into the doctor and it turns out he had a double ear infection. He was given an antibiotic and we thought that would be the end of it. Well, the antibiotic was not working and by Sunday night he had a temp of 103. We ended up going to the emergency room with him Sunday night. By the time we got to the hospital his fever had gone down of course. So they looked him over, gave him an influenza test (it was negative) and they sent us home. Sarah took Jack back to his doctor on Monday the 29th and they changed him to a different antibiotic. Thinking we’d give Jack a chance to get back to normal Sarah stayed home with him Monday the 29th. Tuesday morning rolls around and he seemed to be doing fine so we took the kids to day care and Sarah and I went to work. Sarah got a call around 10:30 from day care. Jack had puked. She picked him up and he just kept vomiting. Sarah called the clinic and the bitchy nurse told her: “ìIf the only way you are going to feel any better is to bring him in them there is an appointment for 7:30 PM available.” Well, Jack was pretty much nonstop vomiting so we were a tad concerned. I cam home from work and one look at Jack told me we needed him to get seen by a doctor. Our HMO was kind enough (implied sarcasm) to okay another trip to the emergency room so off we went. We spent the next 7 hours in the emergency room. The last 2 of those hours with this old dude complaining about his catheter really loudly in the bed next to ours. Jack was given intravenous fluids and finally, after 6 hours he wet a diaper, only the second one of the day. Seems he was a tad dehydrated. He was admitted around 11:00 Tuesday night and Sarah stayed with him. I went to my parents’ where Noah was for the night. The next afternoon he was allowed to go home and we all had a pretty uneventful New Year’s Eve. We rang in the new year thinking we were out of the woods. We were wrong. I woke up the morning of the first feeling extremely nauseous so I stayed in bed when Sarah got up with the kids. Around 9:00 am I went to the bathroom and proceeded to vomit. Unfortunately I did nothing for New Year’s so it wasn’t a happy hangover puke. I had caught presumably the same bug Jack had that made him vomit a couple days before. I spent the rest of the day in bed moaning because I ached so damn bad. When I wasn’t hugging the toilet of course. Things seemed to be going well with the rest of the family until Jack decided he had one more heave left in him. He decided to puke early in the afternoon. Jack and I ended up sleeping in mine and Sarah’s bed that night. We figured it would be best to keep the sick boys in one place. Okay, so now it’s the 2nd, everything should start getting better right? Oh no, not yet. Jack and I were still dragging and Sarah started feeling a little shitty. So she spent much of the day resting. I think we watched most of the 3 DVD 1st season of Spongebob Squarepants that day. We all went to bed but Jack and Noah were not sleeping well. I ended up grabbing a couple blankets and sleeping on Jack’s floor and Noah crawled into bed with Sarah. I woke up around 3 am hearing Sarah calling for me. Noah was vomiting. Great. Sarah had vomited about an hour earlier also. So we all got it. All four of had gotten sick. Woo hoo! Happy Holidays! To rap things up, we all rested Saturday and by Sunday we were all feeling pretty much normal. We went to work and school today and everyone survived. Damn, now that is a long post.