Every winter, croup hits my daughter with a force so hard that it knocks out our whole family. If you’ve dealt with croup, then you immediately understand. It’s evil. But if you haven’t, let’s name my daughter’s croup by its creator: Human Parainfluenza Virus (HPIV). Now doesn’t that sound nasty?
When my daughter was a baby, croup meant she couldn’t breathe. We’d be up all night whisking her into a steamy bathroom or out onto the icy front porch. My husband and I took turns holding her upright in a freezing cold room so she could sleep. Her croupy cough was terrifying.
Flash forward to the present, as croup knocks us down again.
Now that she’s 5, my daughter’s cough isn’t as dangerous. She coughs until she throws up, instead of turning blue. That’s progress! She misses a whole week of school and then returns, sounding horrible.
By this point my husband is sleep deprived and has an odd-looking rash, but is otherwise functioning. My son and I however, are in a full-on battle with HPIV.
I have laryngotracheobrotis. My vocal chords are swollen and my throat hurts. It means I can barely talk, and more importantly, cannot yell at all.
I’ve never thought of myself as a “mom who yells” but it turns out that I raise my voice a lot during the course of an average day. With my murmur-voice I’m unable to do things like be heard over the dishwasher, or slice through sibling squabbles with just one warning.
I lose my appetite and desire to cook. I feed my family pumpkin pie for dinner and call it good. (Squash is a vegetable, right?) When it’s time to do the dishes, I lie down on the carpet like a slug.
My son is made of tougher stuff.
In the morning I creep into his room to wake him up. “You can sleep in. Do you want to stay home from school today?”
“What do you think?” he croaks.
I try to sweeten the pot. “I’ll let you watch television all day. You could drink 7UP and eat popsicles.”
“No way.” My son says, sounding like Clint Eastwood. “Today’s crafternoon at school.”
I have to admire my 9-year-old’s work ethic — as well as his teacher’s brilliance for inventing something called “crafternoon” — but heck, I was hoping to snuggle up on the couch and watch cartoons all day too. Now I’ve got no excuse. Stay-at-home-moms don’t get sick days. I’m supposed to volunteer in two classrooms!
There’s no other course but to muddle through my schedule. I somehow manage to hold things together until my husband comes home from work and a doctor’s appointment. He walks through the door and discovers all of us eating ice cream for dinner.
“Guess what?” he announces. “I have shingles!”
Of course he does. I thought we were a family, but actually we’re a petri dish of germs.
Jennifer Bardsley is an Edmonds mom of two. Find her on Twitter @jennbardsley and at www.heraldnet.com/ibrakeformoms and teachingmybabytoread.com.
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