Sick.

The last 2 weeks our house has been overcome with illness. We had the flu. Not a stomach virus. The flu. In September. WHAT? Already... Well, at least we won't have to worry about getting the flu shot...for H1N1, H1N2, flu 3.0, flu 4.1 or WHATEVER number the CDC is on now.
Our poor little Ella... She was so broken hearted that she had to miss a day of school. This from the child that I had to pry off of my leg the first couple weeks of school... Her fever reached 105. The fear that comes over a parent when a child's fever gets that high is unreal. We put her in cool baths, gave her round the clock attention until we saw an improvement. Her eyes were so different than her normal bright blue-eyed self. You could just see the amount of discomfort she was in on her face. It took 3 days of high fever before she finally started to feel better. Five days in all on the couch...before the flu moved on to our next child. Our oldest had the mildest case of it... Only 2 days of low grade fever and cough.
Then the flu knocked on the door of our youngest... It never occurred to me that our baby had never really been that sick. At three, she has been very lucky and avoided most illnesses that have passed through our house. She was so hot with fever. Her tiny body so tired and weak. One evening, she was acting like she was going to vomit. I went into my normal "puke" mode...lined the couch with towels, gave her a bowl and waited. She said to me, "mommy, how do I throw up?" I thought for a minute...she had never thrown up before... "Well honey, if your stomach starts to hurt really bad, sometimes stuff will come out of your mouth..." Genius, what a great medical explanation. Guess I need to pay a little more attention when watching Grey's... A few minutes later, she picked up the bowl, leaned forward and coughed into it. "Is this how you do it mom?" I tried so hard not to laugh...but I was just glad to see her sense of humor was still strong.
Dear Flu, you are not my friend. Please don't come around again. Yours Truly, Sarah