Large Fierce Mammal

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that I’ve been more than a little sparse in my utterances of late. Let me tell you a little about that.

We of the LFM Clan are a healthy and robust lot, descended from a bunch of tough nuts. When we catch a cold or flu, we take the proper measures and get over it post haste. Mrs. LFM carried SFM Viktor to term without a sniffle, and the Heir himself made it well past his first birthday in the same fine fettle. That is until recently when we capped off more than  two years of perfect health with a cascading series of viral infections that had to be experienced to be believed.

The kicker for it all would appear to have been the SFM starting daycare; an event that inevitably brings everything that’s going around straight back home to the family household. We understand that, and expected it, but there’s nothing like two and a half months of non stop illness – starting a month BEFORE the introduction of daycare – to make you lose your sense of humour about the whole thing.

If I were to pick a singularly annoying thing out of the whole phlegm, vomit, and liquid feces soaked affair, it would have to be the oh so knowing looks given by everyone from medical practitioners to mere passers by in explanation of what we were all going through – “Oh yes, it’s common for children starting daycare to bring home anywhere from seven to ten infections a year!”

Yes well, be that as it may, and timing notwithstanding, our experience is far from unique in this present Winter, and afflicted no small part of the population whether they had kids in daycare or not.

It all began with cold symptoms that first appeared in early October and lasted the month, no matter how hydrated, well fed, or well rested we persisted in being. After a brief period of faux respite, that morphed into a period of renewed cold symptoms accompanied by laryngitis. Next came increased nasal congestion with post nasal drip producing a lung emptying gagging cough that routinely triggered vomiting.

Next came more cold symptoms, another brief faux recovery, and finally, only a couple weeks ago, a 24 hour period of that kind of gastrointestinal infection that leaves one wondering which end to stick in the toilet, accompanied by sweats, tremours, and overwhelming physical weakness. The SFM got it first on a Thursday with two explosive vomit episodes, Mrs. LFM early the following Saturday morning, then me starting south of the border before moving north in the afternoon. Viktor recovered quickly, only to present with projectile vomiting one more time the following week. He was pretty much back to normal after that, but that last episode left us wondering if this was something new, or a relapse of the late unpleasantness.

So here I am writing to you, in my seventh day phlegm free, in a house wherein nobody is coughing, and everyone is passing their food and drink the way it was meant to be. I can only assume we’ve bested our microscopic enemies so there are none left for this season. Time will tell.