Monday, March 16, 2009

Stomach flu all around

If we hadn’t visited Grandma on Friday, this wouldn’t have happened. After all, she said that she hadn’t felt well and had a bad case of diarrhea. (She failed to mention that she was nauseous, too.) But the kids really wanted to visit my parents and ask them what it was like to live through World War II, so I agreed to go. Halfway to my parents’ house – they live just a mile away – I mentioned that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to go over there. Maybe Grandma was sick with something (stomach flu did occur to me), but we were on the way, so I just told the kids to keep their distance and not kiss Grandma. We had a good visit, heard about my mother searching for her dad in Germany, how the Red Cross helped to reunite them, how my dad used to ignore air raid sirens because they went off daily at the same time and nothing ever happened, and then how his building was bombed soon after he left Dresden. Had he stayed in Dresden, he would have been in that building when it was destroyed...

On Sunday morning, 36 hours after our visit, Alexandra started throwing up. Larissa joined her a hour or two later. My mom called during the morning to tell me Dad was sick with the stomach flu so we shouldn’t come over.

“Don’t worry, Mom, we won’t come. I have my own two here with the stomach flu.”

While George and Jacob when to morning and evening church services, I spent the day at home with the girls. Sunday evening, Jacob retired to bed with a pail by his bedside.

Today classes were cancelled, the math tutor notified, and the kids had a low-key day hanging around the house sharing memories and looking at home videos of their childhoods.

Although I have a stomachache and I’m eating very little, I managed to function normally. I know that this is my body’s manifestation of the flu, and I thank God for not being truly sick (although I bet I’m contagious).

Since George didn’t go to my parents’ house, he was just exposed to the flu yesterday morning. The 36-hour point will come this evening…

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What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”
— Albert Pike, Scottish Rite Freemason (1809-1891)