Bringing the Family Together Through Seasonal Illness

Last week, the plague swept through our house, and we’re still feeling its effects. Actually, it didn’t so much sweep through our house as it moved inevitably from one of us to the other like a good pandemic blockbuster movie, albeit on a much smaller budget. The symptoms crept slowly enough from one of us to the other so that we knew what we were in for, but fast enough to know that we were all screwed.

As far as seasonal illnesses go, it wasn’t the worst I’ve been through. Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease wins that prize. If you’ve never had it, then I highly recommend you avoid it like…well, like the plague. Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease combines all of the pleasures of a really bad case of the flu with virulent strep infection. If you’re really lucky, you’ll also get enough weeping sores on your face to make small children cry and grown men scamper at the sight of you.

This most recent bout of illness hasn’t been that bad but, I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed being sick more. I prefer something that leaves me tired enough to not feel guilty about staying mostly horizontal all day, but with enough energy to binge on streaming services for most of the day. Ideally, it’s also accompanied by a low-grade fever that proves I’m actually under the weather and not just “feeling lazy”.

I’m not sure who patient zero was. Most likely it was me or my daughter — not that it really matters. I’m not a virologist trying to track down the origins of an epidemic, but I’ve found that assigning blame gave my family something to do. It wasn’t my favorite game, but it did give us something to focus on other than the fact that we’d all become snot factories and couldn’t sleep for more than twenty minutes at a stretch.

The upshot was that it gave us all something to focus on other than being sick — like a team-building exercise at a failing company. In fact, we’ve probably spent more time together over the past few days than we have, collectively, over the past few months. In hindsight, it’s really been quite lovely. I’m not saying that I recommend it to everyone but if you don’t have time for a family vacation or the funds for therapy, you might want to think about catching whatever it is that’s going around.

About the Author

derekbremer Prior to his life as a stay at home father Derek spent more than a decade performing public relations and marketing functions for financial consulting firms and found the job to be precisely as exciting as it sounds. When not tending to his wife or daughter Derek enjoys subjecting the public to his unique take on fatherhood, travel and animal husbandry. He has been published in Scary Mommy, Sammiches and Psych Meds, The Good Men Project, HowToBeADad, Red Tricycle, RAZED, HPP and the Anthology "It's Really Ten Months Special Delivery: A Collection of Stories from Girth to Birth.