About two weeks ago now Michelle, Anderson, and I went to Dinner with few colleagues. The host family has two kids (about 1 and 3 years old) and the other family has a little girl who is about Anderson's age (almost 5 months now!). Dinner was delicious (taco salad spearheaded by Michelle) and the company (Duffy's and Townsend's) were great. However, the events that ensued were abysmal. Of the six adults and four children there, all but three people got sick (it's possible that we were all sick before the dinner but I suspect someone there spread the 'whatever we all had'). Fortunately Anderson and I seemed somewhat immune but Michelle and the others got hit really hard.
My adviser Lauren sounded like an old man for two weeks, the other faculty Jasmine was coughing out at a lung (and her son also, coincidentally had contracted pneumonia and was coughing till he threw up -- so sad), and Michelle was super congested to the point that some nights she would be up at 2:00am and not be able to get back to sleep (because of the blockage and pain in her sinuses).
To add insult to injury, we had a 'blizzard' (maybe five inches of snow over night that melted off within 24 hours) come through town that basically shut everything down which meant campus was closed (yay for me, boo for Michelle) and therefore the campus health center, Redfern, where we get our checkups done, was also closed. Since Redfern was out of the picture we spent an hour or two looking up and contacting 'in-network' and 'out-of-network' providers to see if anyone could see Michelle before the weekend and of course even though it was 10:00am and no snow had actually fallen yet (it wouldn't actually start until 3:00pm that afternoon) every family practice or provider in the area was closed.
I can't say that I blame them. The roads and driving here are pretty terrible under the best of circumstances and this area so rarely gets any snow that they don't have the infrastructure (salt, plows, etc.) to respond to it effectively. Our apartment complex responded proactively by salting the night before the snow was supposed to come which was great because all of the morning rain washed it off so that when things froze two days later I could slip and fall on my butt on the way to campus.
The one great thing about all of this was that I had one or two pretty flexible, low key work weeks which allowed me to be home with Anderson and Michelle more and help care for Anderson and Michelle so she could both get a break and heal. It spoiled me, so I've been trying to figure out how I can work from home more.
Michelle was sick (congested, groggy, sore throat) for nearly two weeks and we suspected everything from croup, to bronchitis, to strep but when she finally got in to Redfern to be seen it was supposedly just a bacterial thing and she was able to take a prescription (or two or three) to beat it. Her arsenal of cough drops and medications was quite impressive but the most 'fun' treatment she tried pretty regularly was the Neti-pot (which I call a Snotti-Potti). If you have never seen or used a Neti-pot (Snotti-Potti) it basically looks like a small genie lamp that you fill with a saline-water solution and then drain through one nostril and out the other. As the solution pours through the nose the snot and gunk are supposed to drain out with it. When Michelle first did it, it looked so burny-painful and there is just something about seeing someone stand in front of the mirror with a genie lamp in there nose and a flood of snot water dripping from their nostrils into the sink that has a certain...what's the word...appeal :).
Being the good husband I am and after the tenth request from Michelle I agreed to try the Neti-pot (for empathy purposes, if nothing else). It was the worst! And I don't think I did it right/fully drained my nose/sinuses because three hours later after using it, when I bent over to plug in my phone, a flood of water came running out again. I went and blew my nose and thought for sure I had cleared everything out. But then I got in bed and rolled over to face Michelle and there it went again. Snotti-Potti! It was not fun and made me realize how much of a pain it had really been for Michelle to deal with that in addition to all that she already does for Anderson and I.
Anyways, we are all healthy and well again now, hoping for some more snow so I can cancel class and stay home. Pray for bad weather and good health. Thanks.
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