Wednesday, November 4, 2009

H1N1 - and me

I had gotten through two pretty rough weeks. T1 and T2 had been going crazy on volunteer projects for their high school career course. T2's was pretty intense; a Halloween Haunted House that would allow her to accumulate her required 30 hours within a week. However, she decided that she was having so much fun that she would just work through until the end. She did good...I'm proud of her.

My father went in hospital for surgery to correct a problem that had been plaguing him for over a year. Dad is usually my backup driver when Dearly Beloved is unavailable. That week, DB was working a run of morning shifts and was..well..unavailable.That left any early morning driving and late night driving up to me...and the driving had to be squeezed in among the nightly hospital visits.

Then there was normal life...Halloween, housework, groceries, work...by Wednesday night I was sitting on a church parking lot waiting for T1...tears running down my face...wishing I could give up my modern independent woman of the world status and just sit in a corner and suck my thumb and let the men take care of me for a while.

By Saturday night...the last treat had been given out...Dad was waiting for his release orders...T2's volunteer work was done...and I was telling DB how I planned to go into work on Sunday to catch up on a couple of things...then life would be back to normal.

Or so we thought.....

On Sunday morning I woke up with my sheets soaking wet, my chest throbbing, head pounding, muscles aching..and most scary...I could barely breathe...

It felt like forever before I could get DB's attention...

"I think I got it." I croaked. He didn't have to ask..."it" had been on our mind for weeks. We had hoped that I would somehow manage to stay healthy until I could get immunized for H1N1...but it didn't work out like that.

Sunday was scary...if I sat up I felt like I would pass out...if I lay down I felt like I wouldn't be able to sit up... DB got me pre-registered with the hospital on the understanding that if things got worse it was paramedics, ambulance, intensive care for yours truly.

Monday, he took a sick day to stay home and take care of me...he was the picture of awesomeness...doing laundry, cleaning up the house, cooking meals, dealing with the Ts, dragging my butt to the doctor...

Welcome to the world of H1N1...I am off work for a week and sucking back a cocktail of drugs intended to keep me out of intensive care...I think it is working...still feeling a little beaten up..but a lot better than Sunday.

It is an ugly bug readers...stay healthy out there.

Gina