Tag Archives: family members

Why all at once?

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Why does everything seem to happen all at once?

Things just continue to pile up. We’ve had car trouble in the thousands of dollars, because of maintenance and accidents. Stuff is falling apart around the house. Jenny had a severe reaction to Arava which was very scary. My work is insane, and when I say insane, I mean crazy, like dressed up like Mayor McCheese shooting up a Burger King crazy. It’s all too much for me, I guess.

Knowing that it is never smart to ignore symptoms, I went to the doctor to see why I’ve been having chest pain. I went expecting to hear, “Oh, you are stressed out. You are fine.” That’s what I expected, but that’s not the answer I got. I got, “Oh, well, you may be having some issues. You need to go to a cardiologist.”

Seriously? Now? I don’t have time right now.

My Son the Doctor

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Jenny was having a pretty rough morning. My son, who just turned five a few weeks ago, said this to her this morning on the way to preschool.

Don’t worry I’m working careful, hard, and I’m going to school really long and read my body books 145 pounds* so I can get my tools and fix your lupus and kidneys. I think you don’t have a strainer**. I wanna grow up and take care of my momma. I will build you a strainer.

That’s about all I can write about this, because I will look really stupid if I get teary-eyed sitting at my keyboard. He’s a really good boy.

*My son measures everything in pounds for some reason. I think it started with the phrase, “Me too”, which he would hear someone say and then he would respond, “Me twenty-four”, or something like that. He thought too was two and I think he also thought the numbers were a measure of how much you were in agreement with something. Then he learned about pounds as a measurement at school, and so now he measures effort, work, love, etc, in pounds. Time is about the only thing he doesn’t measure in pounds.

**My son is fascinated by how the body works. In one of his books, the kidney is described as a strainer, like the kind we use when we drain the spaghetti.

Staying Well When Everyone’s Sick

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Everyone is sick here. This happens fairly often. The kids are exposed to something at school and they get sick and then Jenny gets sick, or Jenny picks up something and then gives it to the kids.

I usually manage to avoid it or I get it to a lesser degree. I’ve written about what we do to keep each other from Catching a Cold. Right now, Jenny is on antibiotics and I imagine the kids will be on them soon. I seem to be doing okay.

I usually just try and drink more water and wash my hands a lot. I also take a multi-vitamin, which I don’t do on a regular basis. I have no idea if that actually helps, but I figure it can’t hurt.

Catching a Cold

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istock_000004192796xsmallr.jpgI think I’m getting a sinus infection, which really stinks because I’m already tired and stressed out. However, that’s not really a very interesting or useful topic to discuss.

What I do think is worth talking about is what we do when we are ill to prevent our immunosuppressed significant other from getting sick? My wife has enough health problems. She doesn’t need a sinus infection as well.

Here are some things we commonly do to try and keep from spreading infection.

  1. Wash your hands. This is where all the germs go for their travel needs. Those hand sanitizers are good too, but I just like the feeling of soap and warm water. Also, make sure your kids sneeze or cough into their elbow instead of their hands. It looks odd, but it helps.
  2. Don’t share. Even when nobody is sick, we have a standard rule that no one shares a cup with my wife.
  3. Buy lots of tissue. For the price of another package of cold medicine, I can buy half a dozen boxes of facial tissue. My daughter enjoys making giant snow-like mounds next to her bed when she’s sick. Cleaning this stuff up is not a chore for the immunosuppressed.
  4. Sleep on the couch. We aren’t always so good about this, but we always talk about doing it when one of us is sick.

I have just run out of tissue as I type this.