What is so scary about getting sick?

January 20, 2013 by Michelle | 6 Comments

So, this past week, my two boys and I have been sick with a number of things.  Sore throats, runny noses, coughs, fevers and, at times,body aches and lethargy.

Well, not my three-year-old.

He apparently had a double ear infection and what the doctor said was “a touch of pneumonia”, bu still managed to clock about 17 miles worth of running around our house, almost break a lamp, eat like he had been starving for the past week and rope me into wrestling with him on more than one occasion.

But, my elder son and I have genuinely been not well this past week.  He missed two days of school, I missed some work, and we both took an awesome, snugly two hour nap one afternoon.

Here’s my question:  What is so scary about getting sick???

I always hear people say things like, “Oh God, I hope I don’t get sick” or “Oh God, I think I’m coming down with something”.  My husband treats the three of us like we are lepers.  The other day, I asked him to open a jar I had been working at for a few minutes, and after he  finished opening it up he made toss him the bottle of Hand Sanitizer so he could rid himself of my deadly germs!!!???

Others act like getting sick is the most inconvenient thing that could happen to them because it messes up their week.

If you so much as have a cough, you’re told to go home from work.  If I missed work due to a cough or a stuffy nose so far this winter, I would have probably missed over a month’s worth of work.  Should we start using our Short-Term Disability for when we’re sick?

Then, I read on another blog somewhere that in Manhattan, coaches are deterring their kids from shaking hands after a game, or slapping high fives to their teammates, to prevent the spread of the flu.

Here’s a thought:  Is there any chance that by us acting like getting the flu is a death sentence, or that getting sick is a “bad” thing that should be avoided at all costs, is making us more prone to having weak immune systems, and actually getting more sick more often???  I mean, the more germs a person is exposed to, the more of an immunity we build toward it, the stronger our immune system is!!!

If I’ve got a play date with someone and their kid has a cold, do I go running in the other direction?  No!  I don’t care!  It’s a cold!!!  My kids are going to get sick.  That’s how it works.

Personally, I don’t really care if me or my family gets sick.  I mean, if my kids are really sick with 103.4 fevers and puking for a few days…..it’s certainly not fun, but it’s life.  We get sick.  We have to get sick in order to survive!!!!!  Not slapping your team-mate a high-five for scoring a goal because of a fear of the flu is asinine if you ask me.

And so this week my kids and I have been sick.  Big deal.  We’ve missed some school, we’ve missed some work.  We also got to lounge around in our pajamas all day, snuggle, watch ten movies in one day, not brush our teeth, eat a bunch of Popsicle and basically do nothing but hang out with each other while our immune systems did their thing.

Honestly, sometimes getting sick is the only way we slow down enough to actually enjoy or appreciate each other.  Having that two-hour nap with my son and the cuddling we did and the peace and quiet I had with him was so much more enjoyable than the running to meet the bus or the stress of him fighting with his brother.

So yeah, we were all sick this week.  It was kind of sweet.

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