Illness in Temporary Housing: Pros and Cons

Our family has been living under quarantine conditions since Tuesday.  This is because on Monday night, Lilly spent the evening with her head over a bucket.  And then on Tuesday night, Sophia spent the evening with her head over another bucket. 

Luckily, we spotted the upcoming sequel in Sophia early enough for me to walk over to Carrefour and buy that second bucket.

See, here's the funny thing.  We are living in temporary housing.  We have our small air shipment, but we do not have our primary shipment with the bulk of our household things.  We didn't have two buckets.

Cons:
When you're sick in temporary housing, you don't have a stocked linen closet.
Lucky for us, we brought bedding for each of us.  Since our embassy-provided "Welcome Kit" also provided bedding for each of us, we had 3 spare sets of twin sheets in the closet.  But with the first disgusting discovery, the sheets came off and one of those spare sheets was already in purpose.  Only 2 left to go, and they went fast.  It wasn't until the last pair of sheets flew onto the bed that I thought to layer our few towels under and around her pillow, for quick peel-off purposes.

Pros:
When we leave temp housing, we leave those linens behind.
This is not always true, but we are lucky enough to have our shipment arrive and clear customs around the same time that our house will be ready.  We plan to finish off this stomach bug in the next few days, and then move out of this apartment.  We have washed the sheets, of course.  But its still nice to leave them behind.  Along with the couch and the rug.  Cuz who knows what kinda germs got up in there.

Cons:
The incomplete medicine cabinet
My medicine cabinet here consists entirely of the cute little red bag that Target gave me for free if I bought enough Band-Aid brand products - that little bag and the children's medicine I could fit into it.  So, I do have a bottle of Children's Tylenol, Children's Motrin and Children's Benadryl.  And I did to have a few packs of powdered Pedialyte.  But thats it.  Well, and a box of purple Band-Aids which I keep finding stuck to the legs and elbows of household stuffed animals.  We plowed through that Pedialyte and had no other tummy or dehydration solutions. 

This problem is compounded by the nature of temporary housing - it is new, and so are we.  We don't know what is available on the local market.  We don't know what Indonesian moms use for their upset bellied babies.  And we don't know what other things even work, because we have never seen our kids so dehydrated or listless or ill.  Ever.  We never needed more than one packet of Pedialyte in a week.  Or a month.  Or possibly even a year.

Pros:
The little shop downstairs
We are in a high-end apartment building, with a handy little shop downstairs.  I've learned this week that they stock Saltines, Vitamin Water, Lemon Hydration Water, Pocari Sweat and Ginger Ale.  Through this handy store, I've also learned that Ginger Ale is the rehydrator of choice in our household.

Pros:
Keys to two different homes
The girls are slowly getting better, primarily only suffering from exhaustion at this point.  So, they're still sick and tired, but they're well enough to be bored.  After spending the entire week cooped up in our apartment, we journeyed down to our new house today and cooped ourselves up there.  We hooked up our new TV and our new DVD player, grabbed lunch at the little cafe down the street and watched Star Wars in our new family room.  It was pretty exciting.


And it looks like the Pros have it!  Best to suffer the inevitable first bout of stomach bugs in temporary housing!  Lilly and Sophia no longer seem sick, they just seem tired and struggle to regain their appetites.  They have no energy.  Just as we thought we were out of the woods, Dave watched their same symptoms appear in his body and is now holed up in bed.

The hope is that he recovers quickly, because we expect to receive our shipment and make the final move from temporary to permanent housing within the next few days.  But to avoid any possibility of catching this bug myself, I'm sleeping on the couch.  Because of one last con: no guest bed.