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Thursday, February 16, 2017

Sick people, good people

Sometimes, although things aren't particularly going poorly, they aren't exactly going well either, and I've been finding myself waiting to for our chance to "catch a break," as it were. For example, my children have been sick for several weeks now. I missed a week of church to stay home with Zoë a couple of weeks ago, and though her fever soon broke, her cough and runny nose seemed to last forever (though I think she's finally just about over those symptoms as well).

The bishop's wife gave a talk (this week? last week? time is a blur) about how her reading of the scriptures is going. Our ward has a schedule we're trying to stick to this year in order to get through the Book of Mormon (or the D&C, or both). She remarked that she was managing to keep up with the schedule.

I chuckled to myself about how I am not keeping to the schedule (like, at all) and reminisced rather unfondly on how, just a few days before, I was lying in bed reading my scriptures while Zoë was nursing. But then some mucous got stuck in her throat and she started coughing and coughing and coughing and coughing...until she puked all over me and the bed. So I put my scriptures aside so that I could get the two of us into the shower, and I stripped the bed so I could put the sheets and things into the washing machine, and I never quite got back to finishing studying the scriptures that day.

I guess that's the way it goes sometimes.

Zoë hasn't been the only one to get sick. Benjamin also got sick. I suffered from a mild head cold (but nothing like what Zoë and Benjamin went through), the girls got mild symptoms as well. Andrew went to Utah and missed out on the worst of it (including the cough-til-you-vomit days), I think, though apparently there is still time for him to catch it because I just had to go pick Miriam up from school.


She was coughing and acting miserable so her teacher took her temperature and found she was running a fever. She called home to ask me to get her and I told her I would, but then I kept getting important phone calls (one about the change in our bus stop time (I've been complaining to the powers that be because I think 6:20 is a little too early to be shuttling children around the city (actually, the earliest bus stop—for elementary school is 5:45 am))) and then Zoë (who kept telling me she needed to go potty—and went pee on the potty twice) finally accomplished what she had been trying to do all morning and pooped in her diaper while I was putting on my shoes. So we had to stop to change her diaper.

I was just loading the kids into the car when my phone rang again.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" I said aloud.

Seriously. I'm pretty sure I got more phone calls this morning alone than I think I have ever received in one day (not counting junk calls).

I pulled my phone out and looked at who was calling. It was my friend Marian. I decided to answer.

"Hello?" I said, hoping my voice didn't sound as frustrated as I felt in that moment.

"Hi, Nancy! It's Marian," she said. "I was just at the school office and I saw Miriam looking kind of miserable."

"Yeah," I said. "Her teacher just called to let me know she wasn't feeling well. We're coming to pick her up."

"Oh, good!" Marian said. "I just wanted to make sure you had the car today—because I know sometimes you're at home without it—and were able to get her because if you weren't able to I was going to offer to bring her home."

I told her not to worry about it because we were literally just on the way. But it was a great reminder that we are surrounded by wonderful, thoughtful people. So at least we have that going for us!

P.S. I didn't purposely send a sick kid to school. She was coughing a bit this morning (but she's been coughing for weeks on end now) but said she just kept feeling worse and worse at school.

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