Taking Our Turn

Thanks to facebook, I am aware how fortunate we are with mostly-all-of-the-time healthy kids.  Some people seem to have someone sick most of the time.  You know that old phrase "God won't give you more that you can handle."?  I'm just glad God knows me well enough to know I can't handle much :)  On a totally unrelated side note, I should say that I have some serious theological issues with the premise of that statement, but that's a different blog post.
Anyhoo, Casey got the flu last Monday.  Very early in the morning he threw up in his bed.  Once he was resettled he slept for quite awhile and seemed better when he got up.  He had some dry toast but it came back up.  We laid low for the day and his tummy was upset most of the time.  He slept a little but mostly just laid on me.  Tuesday was the same, many trips to the bathroom.  Wednesday afternoon was the worst - his symptoms seem to be improving but he was completely miserable.  I called our doctor to just ask f I should be doing anything about this and was told they were getting a lot of cases of diarrhea lasting 5-7 days.  The nurse laughed when I said we were really more of the 24 hour crowd.  He was on the couch all afternoon moaning and crying and was sort of inconsolable.  I was scheduled to go on a women's retreat starting Thursday so at this point I just accepted that I wasn't going to get there.  Casey is like me when he is sick - I always cry when I don't feel good.  And I felt pretty strongly that I should not leave him in such a state.  Usually Sam gets stuff first - he tends to get a mild case of something and pass it along to Casey.  At this point Wednesday I am starting to think we missed it when Sam had it.  Diapers are helpful to kids in this situation and I was really wondering if we had somehow missed him having a mild case of the flu.  But we hadn't.  Wednesday night he started throwing up. 
On Thursday monring, Casey had a little spring in his step.  He was weak and tired but hungry and heading to the bathroom way less.  Sam was sick.  He threw up again and had some bad diapers.  He is such a different kind of sick kid though.  He is hardly done throwing up and he is telling you he is hungry and then while you clean up he is dancing around the living room, singing and laughing.  So, we decided I should do the retreat.  Thursday afternoon Jeff took me to the host church and left with my watch and cell phone (part of the design of this thing) and a promise to call the emergency number if things got bad. 
I had such a great time - this retreat was such a cool experience -a welcome change of pace for 3 days.  I didn't sleep too well but we had fabulous food, I met some wonderful people and had time to sit and think (imagine!).  When Jeff picked me up Sunday, I heard all about the adventures they had at home - turns out he got sick Friday so there was a lot of laying around while Casey still felt weak, Sam was sick and Jeff was sick.  Saturday Jeff felt better and our brave friends Diane and Ruth took the boys overnight as planned to let Jeff do a wedding, write a sermon and be in church the next morning.  Luckily they are both nurses and they got Sam through the last of it. 
I was so glad to be home and see the boys!   I feel bad that Jeff had to do all that alone but he did a great job.  Here's to healthier days ahead!