What is it that happens to you when your whole family is sick....why isn't there a word for this phenomenon? The experience of widely vacillating feelings toward them from one extreme to the other. Nurturing feelings of knowing your place in the world is right beside them, comforting them and helping them any way you can. And the feeling of wanting them to just stop making those horrible coughing sounds and start cleaning up after themselves. Yin/Yang Empathy/Irritation Cheek on forehead comforting/ Fingers in ears running to escape the hell.
When my son plunged headlong into a flu last week all of those maternal feelings came out. I was feeling his forehead with my cheek, tucking him under blankets on the couch, bringing him juice, making all of those comforting mother sounds that we make. The poor thing had a fever and he was coughing...typical flu. Ick.
The next day I went to work, and my son languished on the couch under my husband's capable watch. He texted me updates as to whether he was feeling way too hot...or way too cold. He survived the day.
My daughter came home that evening from a play at a friends' house. It quickly became apparent that she, too, was succumbing to the flu. She plunged head first onto the couch and didn't move until we picked her up and took her to bed a few hours later.
The next morning I went off to work, knowing full well that both of my kids would be home from school. Luckily my husband was at home and would take care of my poor little sickies.
When I called home later in the morning I got my son on the phone. He was feeling ok...his sister was being mean to him...and dad still wasn't up. What? Why wasn't he up? It was 11:00! He needed to touch their foreheads with his cheek. He needed to make comforting mom noises. Didn't he understand this? If I was going to be able to spend the day at work without any Mom-guilt he was going to have to start making those noises pretty fast.
I got him on the phone...he was feeling terrible. He told me he was going to struggle out of bed and lie on the couch so the kids would be fooled into thinking they were being parented, even though he was only semi-conscious. Good...I could live with this. This plan was going to have to do.
When I got home mid-afternoon I was shocked to learn that Dad was still not up. He felt so horrible that he just couldn't do it..he was in bed cooking himself with a fever. The kids seemed ok...but the pang of guilt that shot through me was intense. The fact that my kids were so sick and had managed all day by themselves almost made me cry. I quickly rushed over to them and put my cheek on their forehead. I did this a few times to make up for lost time. I made some mom noises and then got to work on getting them some food, drinks, cleaning up the piles of snotty kleenexes, and generally looking after things. I was completely dead on my feet...getting up consistently at 4:30am after a not great sleep because of my bed-mate's coughing or feverish-flailing makes for a fairly exhausted person. But I had a renewed sense of purpose at this moment...I was getting things back under control.
When I put the kids to bed that night I told them "call me if dad can't get up tomorrow and I'll come home." I couldn't have a repeat of today. The guilt could cause permanent damage to my body.
All was well until I climbed into bed beside my daughter and felt how hot she was. I checked the sheets for singe marks because she was so hot I thought the bed must be on fire. She was hallucinating...shivering. Her temperature was 103! Yikes! Out came the tylenol...advil...cold cloths. An hour later she was back to a temperature that could sustain human life. I finally closed my eyes, now with only a few hours left for some sleep before I had to get up and go back to work.
Around 830 the next morning, after I had been a work for a few hours, I got the phone call from my son. He said that dad was still in bed, but that he and his sister were feeling fine. I asked them to take her temperature and text me with the results. The text came in... 103.5. I called back..."get dad up NOW!" He was now well enough to look after her, and throughout the day I got the temperature updates as it slowly went down to normal. Sigh....the world is back on its proper axis.
So, crisis over, I now moved into the next phase of dealing with a sick family: Irritation.
Now they are all just lying around...kleenex piles mounting...tv blaring...surrounded by 500 glasses with 1 inch of juice left in them...coughing. Coughing every 3 seconds. Coughing so loudly that they turn the TV up louder. Coughing so much that I cannot bear to be around them. I scurry in and clear away the glasses and kleenexes and get the hell out before I pick up a pillow and smother them. It's at this point that a vague memory appears in my mind of soothing mom-noises and cheeks on foreheads. I cannot imagine how I did that. These people are so disgusting. How did I touch them? They are seething with germs, they are pale and wan with liquids dripping out of them. How did it come to this?!
So again I ask...why isn't there a word for this phenomenon. A phenomenon that has you willing to do anything to make their suffering go away one minute, and poised over them with the nearest pillow contemplating the worst in the next.
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