February Fun with a capital F

A timeline...

--Last week, the vomiting starts anew (I'd been feeling better for a couple of weeks). By Saturday I'm down two pounds. By Monday I'm down two more.
--Last week, the post-nasal drip starts.
--Sunday, the drip becomes an I-can't-breath-hear-or-hold-my-head-straight cold. And the vomiting continues.
--Monday I stay home from work. I've stopped vomiting, but I'm too weak to move, my stomach is too small to take food, and the head cold stays strong.
--Tuesday, repeat Monday, but able to keep a little food down.
--Wednesday morning I'm feeling 10 percent better. I'm way behind at work now, so I decide to go in. Bad bad plan. My body wasn't ready. I was planning to take it easy, but the power goes out for the first half of the day. At lunch I have a fever of 102.2. I convince my principal to let me finish the day if I promise to sit at my desk. I go home, eat, throw up, and call in sick for Thursday. And make a doctor appointment.
--Thursday Ben's out of it. I get him to the babysitter an hour and a half late. I go to the doctor. I slip and fall in the parking lot on some grapes, banging up my knee and twisting my ankle. I'm diagnosed with a sinus infection and given some antibiotics. I'm diagnosed with hyperemesis, something I was expecting but praying against. I'm advised to talk to my midwife about my options, with the hopeful idea that I may be able to just take meds and that would take care of it. They clean and dress my knee. I sleep and watch stupid movies for the rest of the day. Matt comes home coughing and congested.
--Friday Ben wakes up coughing and crying at 5:45. We sleep on the couch for a little bit, then the Backyardigans marathon begins. I go to work, even though I don't feel great, because a colleague and I are just supposed to be doing work all day while subs teach our classes. Upon arrival, I discover I don't have a sub because my paperwork never went through. I frantically call sub services. There's no way I can teach. I get my class started while I wait. The sub comes. I find my sub request buried in my "to give the office" pile. Oops. I spend the rest of the day with my colleague getting work done. It's productive, we enjoy each other's company, and the day goes by shockingly quickly. I throw up in the car on the way home, get home a little early, my mom leaves, Ben wakes up an hour early from his nap crying and coughing. We climb into my bed together and he sleeps for another hour. We resume Backyardigans. He feels hot, but our thermometer doesn't really work anymore. We make a trip to Target for a new thermometer and some Tylenol. We get home. I take his temp. 104.4. The drill begins: I strip him, give him Tylenol and a popsicle, and wait. An hour and a half later, he's at 101.3. We send him to bed in his summer jammies. At 9:45 before we got to bed we take his temp again (101.1). I change his diaper, give him Tylenol, and put him back to bed.


This morning he woke up, fever free, at 6:00. Backyardigans. It's the weekend. All three of us are sick, but I want to get out of the house because I've been stuck in here for a week and I'm losing my mind. I'm secretly terrified of and dreading 25 weeks of continued vomiting, with a possible portable IV. Because I'm a pessimist when it comes to my health and I always go to the worst-case scenario. My midwife is honestly not being very helpful in allaying my fears and giving me options for this moment right now when I'm weak and tired of throwing up. I miss eating dinner. I miss food in general. I miss feeling like a functional human being. I miss being a reasonably good wife, mother, and teacher. And 25 weeks is a long time to feel this way, emotionally and physically. I love my husband and I desperately want to take care of him while he's sick like he's been doing for me this last week, but I'm still so weak and sick myself I want to cry at the thought of it. Because I always get sick first and he gets it from me, I'm nearly always still sick when he is. On top of it, Ben and Matt always seem to get sick at the same time. So after I get a couple of days being sick, I become the caretaker of two sick little boys, while I'm still struggling to function. And I get bitter. I feel like a failure as a wife and mother.

Well, this has certainly taken a dark turn, hasn't it. Sorry. I know that this is all temporary. I know that I have a home and family and food (even if I myself can't eat it). God loves me and is taking care of me, and there's no need for the dramatics. But let's maybe still pray for our family, just in case.