My own woes

Did I mention that I've been sick, too? Through all Emily's mess, I also managed to contract RSV. It won't send an adult to the hospital, though — it just manifests like a cold. But it's been a really bad cold. I've had it for two weeks now, and I just can't seem to get over it.

I've missed a lot of work, and it's starting to worry me. I've called in sick, left early, taken comp time, worked from home... How much of this is my employer going to put up with before it becomes too much of a problem?

The reason for my continued illness is easy to pinpoint. With Emily sick, I haven't had the chance to rest and recuperate. If she can't go to day care, that means I'm at home watching her. That's no small task with her crawling everywhere and pulling up on everything.

Though I'd already been told by three doctors (who saw Emily when she was in the hospital) that there was nothing I could do other than let the RSV run its course, by Monday I'd had enough of being sick. (What follows is not for the faint of heart. I'm warning you now: Skip to the next paragraph.) That morning, I had diarehaa, a new symptom. Until then, the illness had been confined to my head, just like I'd been described. I'd had nothing more than cold symptoms, and I felt run down. Suddenly, though, I was shitting blood. Obviously, that worried me, so I took it upon myself to see my own doctor. I wanted to know whether this was just a reaction to something I ate, or whether the RSV had morphed into something worse.

My doctor didn't make too much of it. He said that the new symptoms were probably a result of my body being run down, and the color was the result something I ate. I had been on a steady diet of cranberry juice for a few days, so it seemed reasonable — and, of course, a more welcome answer than the alternative. He gave me a perscription for some extra-strong cough medicine that he said would help me rest — both by stopping my my coughing and making me drowsy.

So far, the medicine has seemed to work fairly well. I have managed to sleep better, and hopefully that will lead to me feeling decent by tomorrow, when I am determined to return to work.