So, I’ve been sick. Really really sick. For the first time, I can understand why people die of the influenza. It’s simply because they can’t breathe. One needs to breathe, as I have learned to my sorrow and total and utter panic.

Last week all three of my kids were down with a “virus”. Notice, I used italics since this is no virus, but something masquerading as one. In reality, it is some alien scourge on humanity that has most likely been circling the atmosphere for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, and has finally come down with the latest meteor rock strike. Okay, not really, but that is what it feels like. Like nothing I have ever experienced before.

It started out innocently enough. My 6 year old got it first and things didn’t go too badly for him. Five days of 102 degree temps was a cakewalk compared to what I have been going through. I did feel badly for him, though. He was so hot, even with meds in him, that he practically melted his little metal spoon at breakfast every morning. After three days of just the fever, he started in with your average head cold symptoms. He missed an entire week of school but he didn’t seem to suffer much.

My daughter started up with symptoms a few days after him, not much fever, mostly just head cold symptoms. She missed less school but has been sick longer than the 6 year old. My 18 year old got hit pretty hard a few days after her, fever and cold symptoms all at the same time. There were a couple of nights when his breathing seemed pretty labored and I worried. In fact, night four of his illness, after watching his pale and pasty face in sleep for a while, I decided to make a late night run to the store for a vaporizer. When the first store was closed, I turned around and went home. I wasn’t feeling so good.

It was a good call, because within a half hour, I was in bed, shivering with fever and the chills, aches and pains of a fever. I was really determined not to get this virus but I was glad that I was coming down with it now instead of later as I wanted to be all over it long before my nephew’s wedding. So, I settled in for my week of fever and cold symptoms. If only that was what I got! To be continued . . . .