Sick Days

The boys came down with the flu, both of them on the same day.  I was concerned for their health of course, but I was also concerned for both of them staying home to get well on the same day. They can't get along on a normal day, let alone a sick day.  Miraculously it turns out, feeling like crap, actually makes them nicer to each other.  Considerate even.  Illness was making their unhealthy relationship appear healthy.  So much so that I kinda wish they were sick more often.  How sick is that?

When the boys were over the flu and back to school and despising each other, I started to feel it.  The headache with accompanying body aches.  Then a fever and chills.  And finally, the cough.  Although, I always have a cough.  All winter long.  But this one was worse.

Craig has been telling me for years I have asthma.  Which is absolutely ridiculous. As is the inhaler he  prescribed for me and coincidentally just picked up from the pharmacy right before I contracted the flu. Doctors think they know everything. Like when I'm gonna get sick.  Maybe he was even sick enough to plan for me to fall ill, so he could prove I'm asthmatic.  It's quite possible.  He's been looking for a way to be right about his diagnosis for years now while he listens to me hack away in bed lying next to me every night.  God, he's so selfish!

On my first sick day, I could barely breathe for all my coughing and gasping to catch a breath in between.  And there was Craig with that stupid inhaler in his hand he was trying to force on me.   By this point, I was far too weak after spending an entire day on an involuntary intense ab workout marathon that almost resulted in me coughing up a lung. So, I acquiesced.  After a remedial how-to-use-an-inhaler-tutorial-even-a-3-year-old-could-understand from Dr. Kevorkian, I took a hit.  And still screwed it up.

But finally, I could breathe.

I mean I still felt like crap, because I still had the flu and was exhausted.  I spent hours in bed and from time to time the girls came to my bedroom to visit me. From a very distant distance clear across the room, they would have worn a bio hazard suit if we had them.  "Mom, you get sick a lot", my youngest much too smart for her own good child said.  No, I don't!  I get sick once, maybe twice a winter, but when I do, I'm out of commission for a few days.  But, when I thought about it later, maybe there was something to this.  Maybe if I managed my non-asthma I wouldn't get sick or as sick when I did.  

That's when Craig convinced me to move downstairs onto the couch.  So he could spend quality time with me and my unwashed hair, Sasquatch legs and ripe armpits.  We started watching an undercover Frontline episode on North Korea and most of the episode was in subtitles.  "Can you read those?  Do you need my glasses?" Craig asked after he noticed me squinting and moving up to the edge of the couch.  "Um…yeah I can.  I don't need bifocals!"

Ok, so I might need bifocals too...