It isn’t their fault. We took the boys to the zoo and planned to meet with their cousins. One of the cousins didn’t go to the zoo because he wasn’t feeling well, but our oldest went to stay the night at their house after the zoo so we could meet up the following day at a pumpkin patch.
The zoo was pretty nice and our oldest was worn out by the time we saw him again the following day. He had gone to some place called Ninja Nation and he and his cousin had spent well over an hour running around and climbing on stuff.
My job is, once again, taking me from my family for a little while. We were trying to schedule a few things to do as a family before I left to enjoy some time.
Problem is that in that single night, our oldest brought home whatever bug kept his younger cousin from attending the zoo the previous day. After about 3 days he started to not feel well and his repeated trips to the bathroom, as well as the result of those trips, made it evident he was sick. Sure enough, just a few days after that, and our younger son was also ill. His body must have recognized it a little earlier, though, because a day after telling his mother his head hurt, he came up to be crying a little and telling me the same. I laid him down on the couch and covered him up, went to get some children’s tylenol and less than a few seconds after finishing it, he spewed the remnants of that little measuring cup, along with the rest of his gastric contents, all over my arm and the blanket I had covered him with.
So my last week at home before some time apart from my family has been eventful in all the wrong reasons.
Our oldest appears to be recovered, but that still remains to be seen. He has made a couple days without an “episode” which is about 40 hours longer than he had made it previously. In fact, since he was having an episode about every 8 hours we assumed he was okay when he broke into tears about not being able to go back to school.
The youngest may be out of the woods as well. He still appeared miserable at dinner Monday night. He did manage to drink some ginger ale and a couple bites of banana without event. Throughout today he was still limited eating, but hasn’t had another episode.
Either way, I will be on my way to somewhere else and leaving my wife with 2 sick or recovering children, alone, with a baby. That is the way life works sometimes.
The almighty dollar is a ruthless master, for sure. This is also why my dreams in a perfect world include helping people younger than myself to take the right steps to avoid this point. It may be unavoidable in some situations, but I can easily look back 20 years and tell that if I had made better decisions, I might not be in a position where I have to leave my family when they need me most.
This is the most important reason to have the wisdom of generations leading us, and the reason why we should stop disrespecting them or belittling their experiences or their insights.
Every home needs a thermometer. No, it isn’t COVID.
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