Illnesses and other ickies

Today is officially the first day of summer. Naturally, this means that when we contract illnesses, we cannot blame the school district. Given that Pig came down with a stomach virus just this morning, I really wish we had someone else to blame. It won't help the virus run its course or prevent anyone else from contracting it, but it would make me feel better to know it's not somehow all my fault.

Here's one of the annoying things about illnesses and other ickies: whenever one enters my household, I instantly develop symptoms. Someone catches a cold and I'm wondering if the tickle in the back of my throat is connected. A stomach bug in someone else turns my stomach and thoroughly messes with my digestive tract so that if I do contract it later, I've managed to extend my feeling-miserable time. Someone brings home head lice and I spend the next three months itching even if we manage to contain the creepy crawlies to just the one individual. A possible tick located on one of the kidlets will have me slathering petroleum jelly onto random freckles just in an obviously futile attempt to suffocate the daylights out of them. Heck, if I even read an article about bedbugs, I panic thinking they might be hiding between our walls this very second. Never mind that none of us have seen a single hint of such an infestation.

I suppose this is a natural reaction for people like me. I really wonder though at how some families have all this yuck enter their worlds and not react to it. I hear about other families who take their just-puked-five-minutes-ago child to school in the mornings thinking it had to have just been that they ate too much. Never mind that the rest of the family will spend the next week or so "eating too much" and also getting sick. I have heard of families with a mysterious rash heading to large gatherings without wondering whether they are spreading whatever it is. Some families take their kidlets to playdates even when the children are running fevers and oozing green out of their facial orifices. How do people just assume that their contagions will not infect the others around them? Or do they know that will happen and they just figure that it doesn't really matter?

For the record, when Pig got sick this morning, I informed him he was staying home from work, cancelled Rooster's dentist appointment, and called Pig Jr. out of school. You might think this is overkill, but considering that my type I diabetic husband has needed to go to the hospital when he had an insulin reaction in the middle of vomitting, on more than one occasion, he cannot safely be left alone. Since the regular school year has ended, I have no problem keeping all three kidlets by my side in case we have to deal with another ER visit. Besides, my own digestive tract has not handled the news of his illness well, and even the kidlets looked a bit green when I told them why Daddy was home from work. I would hate to know that we had spread this virus, too. I do not wish stomach viruses on my worst enemies.

But as a friend of mine made me realize, when it comes to things we would avoid at all cost, at least we do not have to worry about zombies. I cannot even imagine what psychosomatic symptoms I might develop should an actual zombie outbreak occur. Graaaaah. Braaaaains.