When We Nearly Got Consumption

I’m not sure, but I think I may have referenced being sick at least a couple times on this blog. Clearly I was brain addled because I should have referenced it eighty-seven more times than that. 

I have no idea what sort of hazmat industrial waste is being pumped into Margot’s daycare, but our entire family was/is constantly sick. 

Starting in November, when Margot started full time daycare, we each caught a new viral infection at least every two weeks. 

Considering a viral infection typically lasts one week, you can imagine why we thought we would have to check into Dr. Ulysses C. Sander-Hopper’s Sanatorium for Hopeless Cases, where we would be fed a steady diet of Flintstones’ Chewable Morphine™. 

It was steady, never-ending cases of sore throats, stomach viruses, fevers, and strangely colored mucus. 

The AAP claims that breastfeeding prevents ear infections and boost infant’s immunity. Someone really should have sent Margot the AAP literature because that kid wiped out more people with her daycare germs than the English did with smallpox. 

We all had RSV at Christmas, a stomach virus on her birthday, and I caught the flu during my first week at my new job. 

RSV at Christmas 

Margot had about ninety-five ear infections and got tubes. Spring came. I dreamed of summer’s golden promise of no more snot bulbs. 

We kept getting sick every two to three weeks. I got the worst upper respiratory infection of my life in June. It lasted over a month. I went from Zithromycin to Suprax to the stuff they prescribe to people who have been exposed to anthrax.

 

I had clearly lost the war against daycare but, by all means; send in the terrorists, for I can handle it. My body couldn’t handle simple germs, but damn it, I was temporarily impervious to the evil-doers’™ poison of choice.

Before we sent Margot to daycare, Ian and I generally believed we had good immune systems. Or at least functioning immune systems. Eight months of daycare has crippled us, frightened us, and profoundly altered us. 

It’s a lot like when you’re a little kid and you suddenly realize you’re going to die someday. Except we suddenly realized we were going to die that winter.

Ian: “I don’t want to be dramatic, but we’re all going to die.”

Laura: “I know.”

Ian: “Probably next week.”

Laura: “I know.”

I made jokes about catching consumption. Jokes. And then we got word we had possibly been exposed to tuberculosis because of course we were. 

It was like a goddamn episode of Dr Quinn. Hey, come to our house! For we bring tidings of great joy! And cholera!

For one week, we contemplated having to tell folks at work we hadn’t just exposed them to influenza and norovirus, but also Black Death. 

For thy pox spreads rapidly and will taint all in thy good graces, a black lung that will surely smite thee. It was foretold by Edgar Allen Poe in yesteryear. 

Ultimately, it looks like we were not exposed to tuberculosis, But, lo, what a grand tale it did make. 

Now I'm off to the traveling medicine show to buy a bag of leeches and a tin can of rattle snake oil for the next bout of rheumatoid congestion that comes our way. 'Tis good for what ails ya.