New Year's Flu

Chris and I have started our New Year off with a ... whimper. We both came down with a bad case of the flu (at least it sure feels like the flu) a day after getting home from the Florida tour. I guess I should be grateful that the flu waited to hit after we got home from our last 8 hour drive (my sister-in-law Emily started feeling sick Thursday, the day we drove home), and that it even waited until after Chris went grocery shopping on Friday so we weren't completely starved during our two worst sick days. But it's hard to be thankful for anything flu-related. I even got a flu shot this year... my best guess is that my flu shot saved me from the worst of it - my fever never got bad enough that I needed to call the doctor, and Chris had a fever much longer than I did (and a couple degrees higher), but other than that I don't think I've been faring much better than the husband.

One thing I will say is that there should be a Law of Nature that prevents both husband and wife from being super-sick at the same time. Really, it's pretty tricky when we're both too worthless to take care of the other. When necessary things had to happen (preparing food, shopping for cold medicine and OJ, getting more water) we would kind of have to play a game of "who's sicker right now" to figure out who was nominated for the task. I lost out for lots of water-gathering and food and tea prep, but I kept getting light-headed, so Chris was nominated to make the Kroger run.

And let me just say, being sick with a corn allergy and wheat allergy makes things REALLY tricky. The only pain killer I can have when I'm pregnant is tylenol, but every single acetaminophin product on the market contains some form of corn. (I spent a couple months researching this - my only option would be to hunt down an old-skool pharacist and pay lots of money for him/her to make something for me specifically). Same with cough drops, as best I can tell. And what's a gluten-free girl to do when she needs chicken noodle soup? I actually make a pretty awesome chicken veggie and noodle soup that's safe for me, but it takes a lot of prep time... I can't just boil some water and pour it over some dry noodle soup mix, like what I had for the first 27 years of my life when I was sick (and what Chris did for himself yesterday). Nope, eating more than an orange, banana, apple, or snack bar the past couple days required tons of teamwork between me and Chris. (And let's face it, oranges aren't exactly easy, either). But between the two of us, we did manage to get some veggie noodle soup (with chicken broth) made for Saturday AND Sunday, which was a lifesaver.

I also caved on the tylenol and the cough drops... I decided that the flu symptoms were decidedly worse than the ones I'd have from the corn in each product, so after a night of being unable to sleep because of how badly my muscles hurt, and worrying about my fever, I popped a couple extra strength tylenol and was surprised to find that within 30 minutes my muscle aches diminished significantly, and so had the fever. (And as soon as the 6 hours of tylenol had passed, the aching came right back, and it was time to pop another). I also took the cough drops because my throat hurt so bad. And I gotta say, when I'm sick, I miss the conveniences of modern medicine and heavily processed food.

At any rate, we're still fighting this thing off, and still afraid of being contagious and bringing our pain on others (you can be contagious for up to 7 days after symptoms start, especially if you're still coughing, etc), but we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe just a couple more days?