Yesterday, my fingers discovered two lumps in my neck, one directly under my chin and one under the corner of my jaw.  I’m not prone to lumps in my neck, though my dad was.  While showering, he felt a lump in his neck and one thing led to another.  He had Hodgkin’s disease while still in his twenties, so I was introduced to the terror of cancer when I was a young girl.  The cancer didn’t kill him, then, though.  It took another bout with cancer–melanoma–twenty years later to do him in. 

At any rate, lumps kind of scare me, even though I know that we all have strings of glands in our necks which swell when we’re fighting off infections.  I know this.  And I am dragging a little bit, fatigued, clearing my throat a little more than normal.  So, even though I can’t stop fingering these symmetrical lumps, I am certain (mostly) that I am in no danger of dying young.  (I will die, however, since that is the fate of all human beings.  Alas.)  I’m just fighting off a little virus which is no surprise since my daughter was sort of sick last week.

But I can’t stop teasing my husband.  He wanted me to make popcorn for him and I said, “Yes, I and my lumps will make you popcorn.”  And we talked about how I could just be disposed of in the Back Yard Hole.  (Please, though, send flowers.  Lots of flowers.  No donations in my name to any charitable cause, just an excess of flowers.)

Really, the truth is that I and my lumps are going to bed early tonight, partly so we can finish reading To Kill a Mockingbird and partly because we are utterly exhausted from checking our email every ten minutes without fail throughout the whole day.

I noticed surefire, telltale signs that my children are ill.

My boys: Uncharacteristic silence, stillness, lack of noise. They don’t even fight.

My daughter: Remained in one outfit (her pajamas) all day. For two days, actually.

Also, if a drug company could figure out a way to mass produce a mother’s lap, they’d be rich. My daughter refuses ibuprofen and acetaminophen, but sitting in my lap seemed to soothe her pain. I am Human Pain Reliever, no danger of overdosing.

Finally, during this mornings’ three hour ordeal math semester assessment, I had to fight the powerful urge to hurl a grapefruit at my Reluctant Student’s head. He is lucky I possess so much self-control. And that I’m terrified by the thought of a women’s correctional facility.

When I woke up at 7:10 a.m., I thought perhaps I’d slept right through her crying. Or maybe she was dead. I jump to conclusions like that. (Do you, too?) She fell asleep in my arms last night at around 6:30 p.m. and roused a few times until finally, I put her to bed at 8 p.m. She woke up once at about 9 p.m. and while I fully expected her to wake up in the night, she did not.

She slept until 7:30 a.m.

But she woke up still complaining about her tummy ache. (No mention of ear pain.) I started to wonder when the last time was she’d . . . well, you know. Then I thought maybe she has a bowel obstruction and needed x-rays and surgery, stat! But, as the morning wore on, she padded upstairs to the bathroom and took care of business.

Later, she coughed once and winced, so her ear hurts a little, but not enough to wake her in the night.

I daresay we are going to live through the Great Plague of 2006.

* * *

Now, in other business . . . if you link to this blog and would like me to include your blog in my reciprocal blogroll, will you please email me or leave a comment? Thanks!

Did you hear me rustling around in my kitchen this morning . . . at 3:48 a.m.? Did you inhale the scent of olive oil and fresh garlic and say to yourself, My, my, that Mel is one industrious Christian woman, up before dawn to prepare Italian food! Then did you notice the pajama-clad three-year old sitting on the kitchen counter weeping?

She was weeping because her ear hurt. I’d known that since midnight, the first time she woke up, crying. I think she accepted some medicine, then. I can’t remember anymore. At 3:00 a.m., I’d hurried to her room again, rocked her, put her back to bed, only to be woken at 3:48 a.m. Or had I even slept? I don’t think so, because by 3:48 a.m., I had formulated a Plan of Action.

My Plan of Action included a drop or two of warm olive oil dropped in her aching ear. The garlic is dunked into the oil because of its anti-bacterial properties. I haven’t had an ear infection in my house in many years, but I remembered well that the garlicky oil worked on my 8-year old when he was an infant. So, 3:48 a.m. found us in the kitchen. At 4:00 a.m., I laid her on the ground, ear up, and dropped oil into it.

She screamed, a scream worthy of Drew Barrymore.

And then she slept until 6:35 a.m. When she woke, I rocked her in her room and we both dozed until 7:48 a.m., which was horrifying because I needed to wake up my son, get him off to school, shower and be prepared to meet Baby 16-Months Old at the door. By 8:30 a.m.

My daughter’s ear ached off and on throughout the day. I faked her out and put some ibuprofen in a drink for her. Then her stomach hurt the rest of the day (and still does). She went to sleep early, but woke up once already. (Her 3-year old buddy showed the first symptoms of this illness this afternoon. Am I in a horrible re-run?) I don’t intend to take her to the doctor at this point. She refuses to take medicine by mouth and so a seven or ten day course of antibiotics sounds like a seven or ten day cruise through hell. Plus, studies seem to indicate that eighty percent of ear infections clear up on their own in four to seven days.

But will I survive until then? For those of you keeping score at home: Since February 10–long-lasting cold, followed by sore throat. Brief hiatus, then stomach virus. Just as the stomach virus ended, this flu/virus hit. ENOUGH! Enough. Enough!

The worst part about being sick is that you are desperate for extra rest . . . and you can’t sleep soundly. At least I can’t. And then my daughter has turned into Miss Early Riser and why? Why must she take a bath at 6:25 a.m.?

This afternoon, an email arrived from a local friend. She chit-chatted and mentioned that she dropped off a goody bag for me at the church. My husband brought it home when he delivered my son after school. This sweet woman from church created a gift bag full of cheer-me-up things like an Oprah magazine, Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies, cough drops, scrapbooking paper and ribbons, scented soaps and more. Girly stuff. She called it her RAK–her Random Act of Kindness.

I call it a blessing.

Wow.

If you stand perfectly still in just the right spot outdoors, the sun feels warm. But move into the shadows just a bit and the chill cancels out the sun’s warmth. That’s spring here in the Pacific Northwest. The crocuses bloom, the green shoots of the tulips inch taller each day and the weeds grow. A week or two ago on a foggy morning, I looked out my back window to see
robins hopping along the grass, pulling worms from the ground. I glanced to the tree and counted twenty-one birds huddling in the damp branches, like Christmas ornaments evenly distributed among the branches.

And while I long for spring, I long even more for an end to the Plague which has overtaken our household. In the first part of February, I had a lingering cold for two weeks, following by a sore throat. On February 25, a stomach virus began a rampage through our family. In a family of six, an illness moves from person to person with the precision, though not the speed, of dominoes falling. It ended just in time for a flu bug (sudden onset, chills, fever, coughs/sneezing, headache) to settle in on March 4. My 8-year old was sick for an entire week and still hasn’t regained his appetite nor his strength.

Last Wednesday night, my daughter became suddenly sick. She’s still complaining of stomach pain and has a stuffy nose. Saturday night, the illness I had been denying (I told my husband I was NOT going to get sick, no way, no how, ha!), caught up with me and I spent much of Sunday semi-conscious, my whining daughter by my side, dozing. My twins came down with the bug, too, and have been preternaturally quiet. (The one benefit of having ill children.) Today, I am upright, but coughing my head off and working my way through the tissue box. At least the fever ended.

So, I don’t even care if the seasons change. I just want everyone in my house to be healthy at the same time. For six months, bare minimum.

* * *

Now, in more important news: Tonight is “24.” Last week, I settled in at 9:00 p.m. to watch the latest installment of “24,” . . . and wondered how Jack got that bad guy (Henderson?) in the car. Last I knew, Henderson tried to blow up (invincible) Jack. (When will they learn, those bad guys? Jack cannot be destroyed.) It was halfway through the episode when I realized I MISSED THE FIRST HOUR, the extra hour they tacked on before the regular time of 9 p.m.

Drat and double drat. I hate it when that happens.

Her: That’s too bright for my eyes. My head hurts. I’m so sick!
Me: I know. Do you want some medicine?
Her, wailing: Noooooo!
Me: You’ll feel better. Just a tiny bit? Please?
Her: No! I want to be sick! I want my head to hurt!

And that sums up the day. She woke at 12:30 a.m. and at 5:00 a.m. (Oh wait. I think I already said this.) After accepting a dose of ibuprofen at 7:00 a.m., she has refused all medication, so once the pain relief wore off around noon, she’s been miserable. All she wanted was for me to hold her in the “big green chair,” and if it weren’t for the 9-month old who is determined to stick her fingers in the electrical sockets and her hand into the DVD player and the 15-month old who slept only one hour instead of two and the 3 and a half year old who needed snacks and the 12-year olds who needed my assistance with math, history, and science and, of course, the still-sick 8-year old, I could have held her all day.

My own head began to ache late this afternoon, but that could just be sleep deprivation talking. Even if I don’t come down with this illness, I’m not sure I can leave my baby girl while she is so ill. And yet, my grandmother is turning 100! And my relatives will all be assembled from across the country. Sigh.

Now, for a completely unrelated matter. I have just started reading Jane Smiley’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. I have long admired Jane Smiley’s skill and talent as a novelist. I adored A Thousand Acres, her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, though the story was devastating. I’ve read nearly all her novels (but not The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton–I own it, but haven’t read it yet).

The only complaint I have so far (three or four chapters in) is that the hardback book is so huge that my hands literally fall asleep while I hold it and read. The perils of reading!

I just finished Francine Rivers’ Redeeming Love, another Christian “romance” novel. In this novel, as in the last Christian inspirational novel I read (A Family Forever, by Brenda Coulter), the male protagonist wooed the obstinate and clueless (stupid?) female protagonist. Perhaps the plot similarities were not all that similar, but in both books, I found myself exceedingly annoyed by the women’s behavior. Are all Christian romance novels populated by women who are too dim to notice the stellar male character who offers them True Love? Or is it just that I happened to read two in a row? (I rarely read so-called Christian fiction.)

I think this is why I shy away from romance novels. I spend the whole book being frustrated and annoyed by the characters–which I know, I know–the story must have conflict and obstacles and all that, but I have little patience for all that nonsense.

I just sneezed. I hope that’s not a bad sign.

My 8-year old son hasn’t been to school since the nurse sent him home on Monday morning. He’s hardly eaten a thing and looks noticeably thinner, but today, he perked up a bit. He laughed at cartoons and played his Nintendo DS and ate a little. I thought tomorrow he’d go back to school.

My 3-year old suddenly grew whiny this evening. She was playing Candyland with her daddy when she complained that her legs hurt. She quit the game and had her evening bath. When she came out of the bath, she was shivering and crying. My husband kept saying, “I think she’s sick,” and I didn’t want to believe it, but by 7:00 p.m., she wanted to go to bed. She cried and said she was cold. She felt warm. I covered her up and turned off her light.

At 8:00 p.m., my son finished his bath and from our room, we heard him crying. I rushed to him and found him shivering. “I’m so cold!” he cried. I dried him off and dressed him in pajamas while he asked to go to the hospital. He described feeling weird and cold and pain in his muscles. I brought him medicine and covered him in four blankets. He looked up at me, his green eyes shining with tears and said, “Mom, if it gets any worse than this, I want an ambulance.”

At 9:00 p.m., screams startled me. I hurried upstairs to find my daughter shrieking and burning hot. She’d had a bad dream (the t.v. was going up and down in her dream, how horrific!). I attempted to coerce her into swallowing one teaspoon of ibuprofen, which she promptly dribbled out of her wide-open-screaming mouth. At which point, I, Miss Florence Nightingale, hollered and scolded while she shook and cried.

Then I washed us off and carried her downstairs, where we tried again. This time, she cooperated, even though her hand trembled and tears ran down her face. We rocked for a while and then she told me she was tired and so I took her back to her room, where we rocked again. Then, to bed.

I have now been sitting anxiously, wondering if I hear a child crying somewhere. I telephoned the mother of the baby I watch to let her know we seem to have the flu. They’ve already been exposed, all three of the kids I watch, so I’m not sure what to do now but carry on.

Arrrrrgh! That’s my hearty pirate yell, which I reserve for situations such as this which leave me with nothing to do but yell. My grandmother’s 100th birthday is Friday. We’re supposed to attend a huge family dinner (a reunion, really)in her honor that night. Clearly, we can’t go if we are contagious with the flu, because it simply wouldn’t do to have anyone ask: “And what did you give your grandmother upon the occasion of her one hundredth birthday?” because then, I’d have to say, “The flu,” and how rude would that be?

I wrote a long post, but pretty soon, it sounded like this to me, “and so I . . . and then I . . . and I felt . . . . and blah blah blah blah blah.” I bored even myself.

So, I’m going to just summarize.

All week, I’ve been suffering from a virus which is trying to kill me. My head aches even worse when I cough. I’ve been hot, then cold, feverish, then shivering. Each day seems worse. My daughter has it, too, and really, the only thing worse than being sick is being sick and having a sick whiny 3-year old begging you to hold her when you already are holding her.

What I hate is that when you are a mother and you are sick, the only part that matters is that you are a mother. You have no sick days, no one to stroke your forehead and bring you gingerale and tell you to just stay in bed all day.

I hate that.

Speaking of stupid, let me give you another example.

Me.

Today, I took my boys to Wild Waves. The weather forecast promised cloudy weather, sixty-nine degrees at best. Only a few miles from home, sprinkles of rain dotted my windshield. A perfect Pacific Northwest summer day!

All of this was fine with me. After all, the worse the weather, the fewer the crowds. The fewer the crowds, the less standing in line. The less standing in line, the happier I am.

Only, the clouds parted and the sun shone.

And now I–the daughter of a man who died from skin cancer–I have my first sunburn of the summer. And my kids are kind of pink, too.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. I know better. I even heard that little voice in my head say, “Stick that bottle of sunscreen in the bag, just in case,” but that voice was drowned out by my actual voice shouting, “FIND HIS SANDALS! WE NEED TO LEAVE! I AM BEGGING YOU! FIND THE SANDALS!”

We did have a fine time, though, despite having to pay $35.00 for lunch at Subway inside the park grounds. A small soft drink was $2.99 and a 6-inch sub sandwich was $5.49! Since Six Flags took over the park, everything costs a whole lot more. We rode a couple of roller coasters as soon as we arrived and didn’t have to wait in line at all. The twins refuse to ride roller coasters now, perhaps because of my coercion this summer at Disney MGM, so they waited while my youngest son and I rode each one twice because he loves coasters as much as I do.

I had a moment, a flash of panic, really, when I thought, I am not going to wear a swimsuit in public! And then I did anyway. If you spend your whole life waiting for the day you are fit and cute enough to play at a waterpark, you might never do it. Meanwhile, your kids grow up! And plus, have you ever looked at people at a waterpark? Occasionally, you see a “perfect” body, but mostly you just see all sizes and shapes and degrees of flabbiness. And a lot of belly-button-rings and permanent ink designs on backs and arms and questionable unsupportive swimsuits in dire need of “What Not to Wear” help.

So, we rode tube slides and water slides and floated in the wave pool and meandered around the river rafting pool on innertubes. My youngest son, aka The Reason We Went to the Waterpark, became more and more listless, less and less joyful and finally, when I asked what was wrong, he admitted his head hurt.

He has the virus my twin boys had a week or two ago. Starts with headache, ends with coughing. At least we had some fun before his head exploded and our skin broiled right off our bones.