Makin' Me Sick

I have never been so sick and so frequently as I have in Shanghai.

I thought that mothers were somehow immune to illness. When the whole family was down with the stomach flu immediately before our initial flight to Shanghai, I cleaned everyone up and never felt even a flutter in my own stomach.

But something in the air here, or something in the food or the water, is just unavoidable. It seems that even a mother is not immune.

In December, my illness won the award for the longest lasting. For over 3 weeks, L-- and S-- and I all felt draggy and listless, grumpy and depressed, sore throat and runny nose. Apparently each of these symptoms fit as typical of the bug that ran through Shanghai. I lost my voice, and it remained gone for the entire time. Under the stress of a house of sick children, I still attempted to raise my voice, thereby creating Shanghai Voice. To this day, I can no longer project my voice unless I have had plenty of water over the past few days.

Yesterday, my illness won the award for highest fever. As far as I can recall, I have not had a fever since childhood. On Sunday morning, S-- awoke feeling warm and slept most of the day. We are inept at taking her temperature, but one attempt brought a result of 102F. This can not be far off. She rested, she grumped a bit, and she felt much better by the next day, although a rash still covers her four days later. Yesterday, I awoke with a horrible headache. Advil cured the headache for a while, but by mid-afternoon nothing would work. I let the girls take long naps and slept all afternoon on the couch. By the time Dave got home, I hadn't had the energy to fix dinner and could barely eat it. By 10:00 at night, I had a fever of 101.5F and felt miserable. This gives me much more compassion for my girls when they have high fevers. With no specific complaints, I felt horrible all over.

Dave served as the soothing husband, and after I finally fell asleep last night I slept well into the morning. Feeling better this morning, but Dave has blessedly taken the day off to let me rest. Maybe I can get all of our adoption paperwork done today, leading to no loss in time.