My Kids Just Don’t Understand How to Be Sick
/
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Children are great at many things. They are infinitely creative, see the wonder in even the most mundane, and can often hide in very small spaces. When it comes to being sick, however, children are terrible. At least mine are.
A stomach virus ravaged our household recently. Well, it ravaged four-fifths of it. Unfortunately for everyone, I was one of the four.
I’ve done a fair job of avoiding stomach viruses in recent years, which is good, because it is by far my most hated routine illness and I tend to be affected more viciously than most. Why I take so long to recover is up for debate, but most tend to agree it is because I am a particularly wimpy brand of ninny.
As I approach my fortieth year, my stomach virus recovery schedule is pretty well set in stone. I require at minimum four to five days of convalescence after eight hours of active sickness. During that time I prefer to sleep profusely, moan periodically, become intensely depressed about how non-productive I am (not just while sick, but throughout my life in general), amble around the house occasionally in my sadness sweater stopping to double over at the waist every few seconds, or depending on my mood, rest my face against a wall, door, or window.
On the first one to four nights post-sickness, I wake up shortly after midnight, make my way to the bathroom and kneel on all fours on the cool bathroom tile, breathing deeply. Sometimes, just to mix things up, I stumble outside into the cool night air, kneel down on all fours on the concrete porch, and press my forehead against the refreshing ground for a few minutes. Then I return inside and sleep on the couch for several more days.
At least seven times during the convalescence period I get so tired of not eating, I eat something I regret and then swear to never eat food again.
It’s all pretty routine and normal stuff, but my children make even this completely reasonable and typical recovery schedule impossibly difficult to maintain!
It’s like they’re from another planet. A planet inhabited by life forms who have no clue how to be sick properly!
Get this. My 3-year-old daughter vomited a puddle the size of Lake Okeechobee on the living room floor and then proceeded to go outside and bounce on the trampoline maybe three hours later. Three hours! And you know what’s even worse? She invited me to join her.
Standing there in the yard, my eyeballs shifting up and down repeatedly as I tried to maintain eye contact with her as she bobbed on the trampoline like a small boat in choppy seas, it took all the mental fortitude I could muster to not upchuck all over the front of my sadness sweater.
“No, thanks,” I replied queasily to her invitation to fling my body around on a ten-foot circle of rubber.
Kids!
Later that day, when I should have been sleeping or standing around doubled over at the waist moaning—it was only day two or three post-sickness for me, after all—all the kids decided it was a great time to ride their bikes around the neighborhood. Normally this would’ve been okay, but the 3-year-old insisted on taking her real bike and since she’s a bit unreliable in traffic, I had to jog to keep up with her.
A sudden interval training session was not at all what I had in mind. I would’ve much rather been kneeling down on the bathroom floor breathing deeply as one is supposed to do when sick!
Through it all, though, as tends to be the case since I became a parent, I somehow managed. Thanks to the support of an understanding wife, mainly, but let’s not underestimate how big a part pure personal grit played.
Of course, you might be thinking, “Now, didn’t having the kids there to push you forward actually help you get better quicker?”
The answer to this question is a resounding no. I still felt miserable for just as long.
Which just goes to show you, while children might have a lot to teach us about many things, they have nothing to teach us about being sick. It’s one thing at which they are objectively hopeless.
If you love this post, I have some good news. My book, Fatherhood: Dispatches From the Early Years, is available at Amazon. And if you haven’t, don’t forget to like my Facebook page and sign up for the email list to get updates right in your inbox.