I'm Your Little Ebola Monkey, or Why the Cubs aren't the Only Things Making Me Sick

Well, this ought to get interesting. It's been a long week and today, instead of spending the day at work and then cranking out a post at my desk, I have been working the phones from home for reasons that will become aparent shortly. So I am trying to see if it is feasible to put out a post from my tablet. It takes a little getting used to, but I think it may work. I'm guessing I will have to edit sharply to avoid auto correct entertainment.

Since it is October, how about a horror story?

Last week, I mentioned that toddlers are the most destructive creatures in the universe. This week, I have proof. Maggie, my eldest daughter, has recently been employed at a day care facility. She didn't realize how much on the job training her mother and I had given her in preparation for this new gig. Being the oldest in a big family teaches you more than everything you ever wanted to know about the care and upkeep of small children.

Dirty diapers...meh. Screaming babies...been there, done that. Maggie is a natural, and dang good at her job, She is also thrilled she has found someone that will actually pay her to do what Nena and I have expected of her since she was about 12.

How is that a horror story? I hear you ask. We are getting there.

You may rightly assume that finding a job that pays you to do what you have always done is a dream. But as the fortune cookie oft notes, "be careful what you wish for". And the unintended "benefit" of working with so many runts is that you become little more than a carrier monkey. My daughter shall henceforth be known as Typhoid Maggie.

My new nickname for the daycare is the CDC. As in the "Connection for Disease and Contagion". Everything those destroying angels come down with winds up coming home with Typhoid Maggie. Colds, flu, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, shingles, dengue fever, Malaria, whooping cough, measles, mumps AND rubella....pretty much everything this side of mad cow disease. And on Saturday, Maggie brought them all home at once to share.

Saturday, she started saying she wasn't feeling well and by Sunday afternoon, she was a veritable expert in the fine art of the technicolor yawn. Naturally, I felt horrible for her. But it was football.....err...conference sunday, and I felt fine. BYU won, the Broncos won, and the Cubbies had not yet revealed how they are going to break my heart THIS year. Oh, and I did get a spiritual boost from LDS general conference.

By Monday, It. Was. On.

Maren got all barfy and passed the morning acting like she had spent the night before on the corner seat at the wooden leg saloon. She said her head hurt, and her stomach hurt and bluphhhrrghh... off she ran to the bathroom, hands over her mouth and her cheeks puffing out like a squirrel in September. She was feverish and miserable, but I went to work. She stayed home from school, and by the time I got home Monday night, she was turning fitfully in her room.

See, the nice thing about when bigger kids get sick is that they generally have a good idea of when it is time to bow down at the foot of the porcelain idol, and for the most part, should they miss, they clean up after themselves. Maggie and Moe could be as sick as they wanted, Not. My. Problem.

Tuesday morning, she managed to exit the crypt and got to school in time to compete with the band out at Bingham high. I admit, passing over those haunted, hated environs was enough to make ME want to puke. (All West Jordan wrestlers have an instinctive hatred of Bingham.)

Maren still looked a little pale and ghostly, but she mumbled something about "If I can get to act 2 the King will stab me to death and it will all be over..." and she went out and performed like a champ. Greater flu game than Michael Jordan. I'm telling you, the kid has skill.

Wednesday, She was fine. Looked like a 48 hour bug and we were all in the clear, right?

C'mon guys. You know me better than that. That wouldn't be much of a horror story at all.

Tuesday night, wee little Will came down to my bedroom with a creaky, simpering voice and mumbled "I don't feel well."

Tough nuggies, says Dad.

"Climb up here and snuggle with me", says mom.

See, Nena has one weak point, one soft spot in her mom armor. She is a sucker for sad little boys.

"If he caught Maggie's cholera/tuberculosis superbug, he is nothing but a teddy bear full of rabies" I said. "Have you even watched 'Outbreak'?"

"I'm his mom", Nena said, "and he is sad and needs to be snuggled."

"Do what you want", I said. "I'm going to sleep in the bathtub."

That turned out to be a really bad idea, as within minutes, Will was a foot and a half from my head, tossing his cookies. And dinner. And breakfast from the day before. And something that may or may not have been a cowboy boot.

"Huh. Don't remember eating that." I heard him mumble as he washed his mouth out with listerine and went back to steal my spot in the bed.

I reached up and turned on the hot water full blast without bothering to get out of my pajamas.

It didn't work.

By 6 in the a.m. on Wednesday, I was on the highway to Hell. My eyes were red, swollen and scratchy. For me, this is a bad thing. Ever since my cornea transplant, I have had an early warning indicator for when I am about to get sick.

You see, when my immune system starts ramping up to fight whatever nasty parasites Typhoid Maggie has brought home from the CDC, the first thing it does is attack my transplant; kind of like an undercard bout on the fight card. Every time my eyes start acting up, I know I am in for a crummy couple of days.

By 6:15 on Thursday I was suffering nausea, headache, coughing, watery eyes, and what they call in Chinese, "hot stomach". It was awful. To my suprise, Maggie, Maren and Will were unmoved.

"Get up, Old man. You gotta go to work." said Maggie. I downed a bottle of pink liquid and wondered if tigers got sick after they ate their young.

I went to work and got a few things done before my merciful coworkers banished me. Guess they weren't interested in sharing the fun. I came home and tried to sleep it off. I was up every 20 minutes, writhing in pain and trying to keep my pancreas from escaping through my mouth.

It is funny how much more sympathy my sweet, sad little Ivy was able to elicit from me when she came down last night and barfed all over my bed without saying a word.

"Cmon, tiny", I said gently, carrying her pasty, limp body to the tub for a nice warm bath before shoving the soiled bedclothes in the wash. Frankly, barfing seemed like a really good idea to me, too.

"What happened to 'carrier monkeys full of famine and pestilence'?" Nena asked me.

"That was different", I said. "Now I'm the one that wants to be snuggled."

"Uh-huh." Nena stated flatly. And then she added with a note of sarcasm, "Do what you want. Go sleep in the tub."

Apparently her sympathy for pathetic boys has some limits after all. And I deserved the sarcasm.

So anyway, to recap, five sick kids in five days and enough projectile barfing to turn my house into a scene out of
"The Exorcist."

And as I type, Sean just started looking pale and making gurgling noises. Looks like we are gonna keep our 100% after all. Jeez, can't we all just get sick at once and get it over with?

Enough for now. I gotta go because the Cubs playoff game is starting in a few. And if that doesn't make me wanna be sick, nothing will.

Talk about a horror story. Ugh.

See you all next week.