Crabbydoc I'm Not...

The one thing I really hate about being a parent is the uncertainty of it all. Especially when the spawnage are sick. Colds I can handle pretty well but this flu shit leaves me a tightly-packed shitball of neuroses.

Example 1: Miss O wakes up this morning with a nastyish sounding cough. Other than that, though, she seems fine -- no fever, the cough is dry, spunkiness intact. Thing is, yesterday, Mr. Z had a little cough and he ended up coming home with a fever and the flu. So, do I send her to school and take the chance that she's going to take a turn for the worse, or do I keep her at home to stew in the viral hell-cloud being spewed willy-nilly by Mr. Z and the Old Lady?

Solution? I sent her to school. And I've been sitting here waiting for the call from school all fucking day. It's killing me.

Example B: Mr. Z has the full-on plague. 103 fever, hacking cough, flushed complexion, sleeping in the middle of the day -- the whole sack-o-shit. Last night, he woke up burning hot, and this after giving him two Advil. No effect. Now, I know it's a virus and fevers are part of that, but usually they respond to Advil. So I'm sitting there at three in the morning trying to decide whether or not to wake the fucking doctor up and ask him what the shit to do. I didn't call.

He was still alive this morning, so that's a plus. I called the doc this morning and they said to just keep monitoring him and make sure his temp doesn't hit 105 and to keep him well-hydrated. Okay, fine. He crashes on the couch for about an hour, out cold, then wakes up kinda babbling. Half coherent, half Nutty Professor. I walked him upstairs to his bed and he said...

MR. Z: Can you put the crush on the bed?

ME: The what?

MR. Z: The crush! (points to a fuzzy orange pillow of his... that he has NEVER called "the crush.")

ME: Oh, the pillow. Sure.

MR. Z: And can you pull up the Oprah?

ME: Huh?

MR. Z: The Oprah! What, are you deaf?

ME: [no idea what the fuck he's talking about] Uh... the comforter?

MR. Z: Duh!

So, clearly, his brain is melting and I'm sitting here with my thumb up my ass doing nothing about it. Holy shitfuck, this kinda shit kills me. And it doesn't help that the Old Lady is sick, too, so I have no reality check to turn to. She usually yangs my yin (though, sadly, not in a while...) so I don't freak the shit out when they're sick.

So here I sit, waiting for them to either get better or expire. Frankly, in my mind, it could go either way. The only sure thing is that if this stomach acid continues squirting into my colon at the rate it's currently a-squirtin', I'm going to be able to feed myself through gaping open hole where my belly button used to be.