A month of illness...

January was a horrendous month for illness. I say that with great annoyance knowing we did everything we could to try and avoid most of what the season had to offer. While Amy was still pregnant, we all got immunized against the flu (H1N1, and a couple of other strains) and pertussis (whooping cough). Can't do much against the cold (which I have a huge issue with), but we always did our best to wash everybody's hands and all the things doctors advise. The wild card, however, is daycare. Anyone out there who has kids in daycare knows exactly what I am talking about. You can bathe your kids daily, wash their hands all day long, give them multivitamins daily, dress them warmly in cold weather, etc...and it could end up really making no difference at all when confronted by the dangers inherent in sending a kid off to daycare. The problem, really? Not all parents are as attentive as we are (or perhaps as, dear reader). They do not have jobs that they can afford to stay home from when a child is exhibiting symptoms of anything, or they simply do not want to. So the kid(s) end up at the daycare...and infects one or more or all others.

In the past several months, poor Devlin has endured no less than three ear infections, two of those instances being double ear infections. This morning marked the third one of those; he was feeling bad last night and awoke with a temperature hovering around the 101/102 mark. The mixed blessing with this is that he can at least take antibiotics. This was not the case with earlier in January when he came home with the first case of RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) we have ever encountered. It got so bad for him that we ended up calling the paramedics one evening and his needing to be transported to the emergency room for treatment). One by one, it took over our entire household. For adults, this virus is not unlike a very severe cold. However, for infants, it could be the worse case scenario. We had to once again visit the ER with Liam's case, but his was far worse than Devlin's, requiring ER techs to work fast to stabilize him and then also having an ambulance actually transport him from the ER located in Manteca, to the Kaiser facility in Santa Clara because that was the closest hospital with the best tools and teams to handle his treatment. Poor Liam, only about a month old, spent almost two weeks in the hospital, with Amy at his side daily and me trying to hold our household together with a still recovering Devlin and Keira dealing with her own bout of the virus. Finally, he was recovered enough to come home, where we had to watch him almost hourly and make sure we kept everybody washing hands, etc. Through all of this, Amy and I are still recovering ourselves and then we hear my Mom has a sinus infection. Additionally, John has been dealing with sinus issues and a possible infection for about a week himself. At my work, one co-worker has bronchitis, another is recovering from the flu.

What the hell? When will this all be over.

Oh, and guess what? I might have gout. That's right...fucking gout. I woke up this past Sunday morning with a throbbing pain in my foot which just got worse throughout the day, forcing me to limp if I wanted to walk anywhere. Monday afternoon and evening it got worse, forcing me to call and make an appointment with my doctor. I was glad I did as I spent several hours late Monday night suffering through extreme pain in my big toe joint, watching it and my foot swell up, pain I had never endured before (and I have numerous tattoos and have inflicted a variety of piercings onto myself in the past, so I am no stranger to pain...). This felt like someone taking a crowbar and trying to pry apart my big toe from my foot, over and over again in waves. At the doctor's, he visually confirmed it was most likely gout (which Amy had initially suggested, actually), but had me run through an x-ray and giving what seemed like a HUGE amount of my blood to be tested. Still awaiting the official diagnosis, but I am pretty sure it is gout. I feel so old, now. Could be inherited, could have to do with weight (although I have lost over ten pounds in the past month or so), could be diet. The worst thing I have to limit my intake of? Beer. Beer is a huge contributor to gout issues. Of course, heavy drinking of beer and other alcohols are related to it, but the amount the guideline notes as excessive I never come close to. I might have a six-pack a month, and not even all at once. Ask Amy: She used to get annoyed with me when she would drink in the past and I would say, "Eh, not really feeling it." So who knows where this is all coming from. All I know is that it hurts like a fucker and I am limping around like Gimp Boy...

So, if you talk to me and I seem like I am a wee bit cranky, you know why. I can only hope that the fates have conspired to front load all of this crap and the rest of the year is going to be better...