When Will It End?

Last Saturday, Caleb's 10th birthday, Jacob woke up not feeling well and running fever. He was still running fever Monday, so I made an appointment for him to see his doctor. The exam showed great ears and throat, and his lungs sounded clear. The main issue was his congested cough, so the doctor gave us two weeks worth of Singulair for Jacob to take at night.

Tuesday, Jacob had quit running fever and was feeling really well. Caleb, on the other hand, had started running fever. His symptoms were identical to Jacob's. Friday morning, I made an appointment for him to see the doctor. It was his fourth day of fever and his cough sounded a lot worse. Like Jacob, Caleb's ears and throat looked fine and his lungs sounded clear, but he did have quite a bit of nasal congestion. The doctor ran a flu test just to be sure, but it came back negative. He prescribed Mucinex to help clear the congestion. Later in the afternoon, Caleb's temperature was normal. Before bed, it had climbed back up to 101. This morning when he woke up, it was normal. By noon, it had climbed back to 100. It's been hovering around that all afternoon. I felt surely his fever would've gone by now. At least it hasn't been hovering near the 102 mark like the last few days. Maybe it's slowly creeping down and will be gone Sunday. If he still has fever Monday, he'll go back to the doctor to figure out why.

Back up to Thursday. Billy came home from work early, not feeling well. He took some Alka-Seltzer cold medicine and crashed in his study for the rest of the afternoon. He called in sick Friday and spent most of the day on the couch in the study trying to rest. At one point he started feeling really warm, so he took his temp and found he was running a low-grade fever. He's been sleeping fitfully because of the congestion. Today he seemed to feel a little better. Maybe tomorrow will be better still.

Friday night I started feeling a bit of a scratchy throat and had a runny nose. I had been hanging on to a sinus headache for a few days. When I went to bed, the stuffiness began. Thankfully it wasn't bad enough to keep me awake. Today I've been alternately stuff and drippy, sneezing and blowing. No fever yet.

I made a quick trip to Wal-Mart this morning to pick up enough meds to last all of us into next week. Hopefully I won't have to get more.

I'm so ready for this to be over with. Why is it that we're passing it on to each other so slowly? Why couldn't we have had it all at once and been done with it? I washed my hands like crazy to keep from getting sick, but it seemed to be for nothing. I have it now, and all I have to show for it are two red, chapped, cracked hands.

Hopefully we'll all be better by the weekend so the boys can go on their much-anticipated trip to Mamaw & Papaw's house. This makes twice we've had to postpone it because we're sick.