Help Me Make It Through The Night

I was warned by a nurse (there seems to be a proliferation of them here in the town that Mayo built) that the first year of working in daycare would be beyond miserable. The puking, the coughing, the bodily fluids - no, not the childrens'. Mine. They caution beginning elementary school teachers and new medical professionals that they will be ill a great deal in their first year of the profession. Daycare workers double their risks, as do new nurses starting out in the public sector.

All this is to say that I'm so sick of being sick. I can count on both hands the number of days we've been well in the last 3 months. By we, I don't mean the usual Royal 'We' or even the Collective 'We'. I mean Walker and I. While we are separate people operating as a symbiotic relationship, our health (or lack of it) has become its own twisted entity. He's sick, I'm sick and vice versa. And there's such a small lapse of time between the two that it becomes almost simultaneous. Some things run parallel rather than simultaneous. While he took heavy antibiotics for the ear infection, I found that I had to upgrade my asthma medication in order to breath.

You know, I get it. I understand that our bodies are just building up...well...antibodies and all that. I appreciate the fact that we had been in a rather contained environment (I can't say 'sterile' - I've seen my housekeeping) and now we're building up our immune systems. But there has to be a point where I get a two week break or something. I can tell you which is cheaper: NyQuil or Tylenol Nighttime Cold. I can tell you all the taste differences between them as well. I know more about the differences between expectorants and suppresants than any non-pharmacist should and I'm thinking of having to marry my vaporizer since it spends so many nights in my bedroom.

And the part I hate most of all is that I'm doing this by myself. Blah, blah, poor pitiful me, waaah. It's one thing to deal with a sick child all night and have tears streaming down your face because it's so unfair that they're sick all the time. It's another to be leaning over the toilet for fifteen minutes with tears streaming down your face and the two year old insisting that you need to come change his poopy diaper NOW! And coughing has taken on a whole new meaning after motherhood. Trust me, if you've carried at least one child in your body, you know what I mean when I say: I'm coughing so hard I had to get a pad just so I could sit on the furniture. Yeah, icky. But life just the same. Bladder control? Kegel who?

I understand that my body is doing what it's supposed to. But what my body really wants is a nice, comfortable bed where the sheets aren't soaked with sweat, a relaxing shoulder massage designed to open up the sinuses and the number of the truck that hit my ribs in many tender places.

And a lot of sympathy.

And chocolate.

And someone to feed me soup in bed.

And light toast with butter and grape jelly.

And...and...and...