...the flu before Christmas

Twas the weeks before Christmas and all the house knew,
The plans were on hold, because Mom had the flu.

It was a new concept—getting sick before the holiday stress begins, thereby eliminating all the work. It’s a great way to simplify Christmas, but I can’t recommend it.

I started the turkey and a sore throat together on Thanksgiving morning, and they dried out and crusted over together. By pie time, my eyes were flambé and my head, fricassee.

A day later, while the family consumed the leftovers, I moved up my post-holiday strep test, but there would be no simple antibiotic antidote. The doctor recited the viral litany; "Rest, drink plenty of liquids and come back." ...and pay more next week, when you’re worse?

Hope was soon dashed when each day dawned the same.
The Mom writhed and wretched, as the days waxed and waned.

There are very few opportunities for male heroics in our house because I can break the jar getting the lid off as well as any man, but this moment was defining. Alexander the Great has nothing on a guy faced with a flu siege, who will fortify and guard the children, wade into sibling battle skirmishes, forage for supplies, and not sacrifice at least one pet in the process.

On top of all that, my husband not only held the holiday bombardment at bay, but attacked it. Of course, his success set me up for his he-man debate later on, but at that moment I did not care.

The room was in quarantine, sequestered in bed,
while visions of absurdities danced in her head.

Days and nights melded as I woke only to hallucinations, imagining the distant hum of the washer and dryer, the illusion of tiptoeing footsteps, and the ridiculous idea of peaceful homework. I was roused several times by the vague scent of food, (and responded in typical flu-like fashion), but nothing completed my delusions like a vision of the Grinch decorating the Christmas tree.

I had staggered down the stairs on the sixth day and stood sobbing into my socks at the sight. My tears were no true barometer—I had wept earlier after finding my slippers by the bed rather than under it, but I could no longer contain my despair. I knew that seeing my husband voluntarily participating in a Christmas festivity meant that I was now certifiable. I had dropped over the edge of the wide abyss and would have to be committed.

Bring on cough drops and cold pills, make mustard in plaster
In a desperate attempt, to resolve this disaster.

I have a new, greater respect for illness and I’ve redefined the word patient. Midweek, I shivered over the candles on the five-year-old’s birthday cake and was reminded: Do not tempt the flu fates or they will curse you back into supplication! Back to bed with a new mélange of medication.

Bring me anything and I will take it. Diphenhydro-fexacloral-phenapropanala-mine, mine, mine! I don’t care that it’s been banned by the F.D.A. for five years. It worked last time I was sick. It’s not even the same symptoms, but I’ll take it anyway!

After exhausting my own personal pharmacy, I started the over-the-counter stuff. I sampled everything remotely related to flu, or colds, fever or aching.[1] I even stretched congestion to constipation, but this bug resisted it all.

When the M.D.’s advice bombed, I started--with advice of the A.D.T’s:[2] Honey with lemon, snorting horseradish and saline, fresh garlic and onions, even shark cartilage! I was desperate.

Finally in utter despair, I returned to the physician. For a mere hundreds of dollars, I was granted my idea of the Life-Blood Elixer—an antibiotic and a killer cough medicine. Hallelujah! I could now get better.

I’ve become allergic.

It felt as if the flu bug exited my body at midnight and crawled all over it, scratching welts until dawn. My brain raced and I wrote and illustrated ten books. So brilliant were my thoughts that I had to write them down… in tongues.

Finally off all of the medications, I’m left alone, broken and defeated.

When next I wake, the storm has passed and in its wake, lies the wreck on the beach. One side of the hair is four inches shorter than the other[3] and my face is a portend of myself at sixty.

The glitz of each card, the braggados of each letter
Should bring inklings of guilt, but it doesn’t upset her.

Only when you have made the prescribed sacrifice to the voodoo gods, will the curse be lifted. Chastened and humbled, I emerge from the sick room to disinfect the abode. I revisit my perception of the perfect holiday and prepare for the pared-down version. Nobody cares, no one notices, and I do it gratefully, stress-free.

And she heard the kids yell as they flew into sight,
Christmas break just begun, "Glad that's all put to right. 

Reality Bite: Where there is no mess, there is no clean up! I'll beat the January blasé bug too.

[1] Stuffy and runny, fixed with one product—ah, the marvels of medicine!
[2] Any DANG THING!
[3] For your information, that nineteenth century remedy doesn’t work.

…voodoo that i do

Midway through an illness is a bad time to discover allergies to a medication. An itching episode ensues and I wonder if it’s the illness or the meds. Bugs are an integral part of life, but images of them crawling all over, should be a side effect of stronger medicine than cough syrup.

Dandelions are fondly remembered as one of my first allergies and fuchsia-dyed pistachios brought on rashes of the same color. If there had been a medical allergist available in my youth, I could have paid for his cabin cruiser.

Far from being a sickly child, my parents knew before the specialists, that my reactions were excitement related—too much of anything brought on hives. It’s a great evasion tool for a kid, “I think this broccoli is making my throat itch…”

My small town doctor—the last, best physician in the industry—prescribed avoidance therapy. Pistachios were an easy miss but back before herbicides, dandelions weren’t, so I spent a lot of time with my best buddy Benadryl[1], sitting in the evening chill, breathing deep and humming calm mantras.

I’ve discovered more things that make me itch as I age, but it’s never something to my advantage like dust mites or animals. “Oh shucks, can’t do dusting or pets. Tichoo! Tichoo!”
Due to a physician aversion, (I must be allergic to them) I don’t do conventional scratch tests—instead I do an itch test. When I swell up and prickle unceasingly, the quest for the culprit begins!

To me:
Tonight a combination of parsley and latex[2] made me the gyrating life of the party with my red face and full-body itch. Last week it was mango. What’s up with me! T.

Anaphalaxysis, (that means itching and swelling unto death) is a side effect of some of my allergies, but I’ve only had to resort to the shot once or twice. The hyped up feeling and buzzing, twitching aftereffects make it almost worthwhile.

Reality Bite: Allergies are contagious. The husband just woke with a full-body antibiotic rash. I tried to convince him that it was sympathy pains, akin to the weight gain he suffered while we were pregnant.[3] Both itching, Terribly T


[1] Brand name meaning “just-be-glad-we-renamed-it.”
[2] Don’t you know that’s how they invented Playtex?
[3] Men! What does it mean when they stare at you with that furrowed brow while shaking their heads side to side?

…witch doctor

I’m now allergic to all the good stuff—codeine, and all its derivatives, so I’ll never make a good addict. But, they aren’t on my list of self-meds anyway. I’ve limited myself to what medical doctors call OTC’s. (Over-the-counters. Just picture a desperate me hurdling over the counter after them.)



I’m forced to self-diagnose because doctors are the only vocation that avoid their busiest working hours. The world gets sick after five on Thursday, all day Friday, and every weekend… so doctors go golfing.

They universally object to house calls between the hours of midnight and four, and that’s why I self-diagnose—and because a woman’s primary physician tends to specialize below the belt and my pet illness, strep, isn’t in their area, so rather than keep four or five different specialists on retainer, I practice “physician heal thyself.”[2]

While medical doctors don’t worry too much about people treating themselves to a selection of colorful bottles from a drug store, it’s surprising how nervous they get when they find out that you are dabbling in alternative remedies—particularly when it involves veterinary meds.

To me,
As the niece of two nurses, who are the children of a nurse, who is the daughter of a nurse, the daughter will be well suited to fill my shoes… I hope she does it quickly, before I’m sick in them. Is that too many details? T.

I'm the family’s certified witch doctor and can usually diagnose the entire tribe, but if it’s a tough bug, I probe the children’s pediatrician at their disease-of-the-month visit, and then I perform my own voodoo, mixing, measuring and dispensing the medicinal concoctions.

Then getting the medicine down the throat involves performing another convoluted song and dance of contortionistic[2] mumbo-jumbo until the patient convulses with laughter and the mouth is wide open.

To me,
At preschool pick-up, I mention how sick I’ve been all week and a friend asks, “Did your husband have to take time off? Are you still driving the children? Have you seen a doctor? Are you getting any rest? Does your husband cook? Can you breathe yet?”

To each question, I snort no, and then she nods knowingly, “So, things went on the same as usual?” T.

Sickness can’t get us down! Women aren’t allowed to succumb to sickness. We must stuff another packet of tissues, a barf bag and a wider variety of self-meds in our purses and go about the business of busi-ness.

Reality Bites! Another girlfriend who had cancer, once said, “It doesn’t make any difference, you are expected to just go on …unless you die.”

[1] Sounds like Shakespeare, doesn’t it? We’ll blame him til someone else calls and claims credit.
[2] It’s not a word? How can that not be a word?