Paid For It Anyway

We've all been fighting some kind of crud ever since before Thanksgiving. Ryan came down with it first: headaches, body aches, sinus congestion, cough. I thought it was the flu and rushed him to the doctor. Not a flu, just a viral thing, no antibiotics required.

Kevin came down with it the day after Thanksgiving. I treated him at home but after nearly a week he wasn't making progress, so off to the doctor. His had set up Bronchitis.

A few days later Ryan said he thought Kevin gave it back to him. Neither of them were really sick at that point, but just generally miserable, coughing and runny nose. Then two days before the school Christmas holidays Kevin came down with it again. The next day, I had it.

This, despite washing the clothes and bed covers in hot water (repeatedly) and Lysol and Clorox'ing and drinking lots of orange juice.

I got over mine quickly, like in two days, because of sleep. I always preach that sleep is the best medicine, because it's a fact it's worked for me repeatedly with various colds and infections over the years.

J came down with it around Christmas but was feeling better after a couple of days of medicine and rest in sunny, warm Florida. On our last day in Florida the weather was gorgeous, in the upper 70's, and we visited a nature preserve, walking the nature trails. That evening, J was congested and stuffed up again. We dosed him up and he seemed to shake it off a day or two later.

On Thursday our weather had turned off pretty nice around here, and J wanted to get outside and do some things. I asked him if thought he should do that. There were some inside projects he could have worked on instead, but he said he could do those when the weather was bad and he couldn't get outside.

Then he had work a 12-hour shift on the ambulance that night, and as he does when he pulls an all-nighter, came home Friday morning and went to bed. When he woke up that afternoon about 2:30, he was dog-ass-sick.

So Thursday's *Free* projects ended up costing us a $25.00 co-pay and $39.00 worth of prescriptions.

If you actually read all I wrote above, you may have noticed that I was the only one that didn't require a visit to the doctor or prescriptions.
Kevin missed a total of 7 days from school. Ryan does most of his schooling online (college) so he was lucky to have not missed any, but he did miss some of his volunteer fire department training and a good many emergency calls, for which they get paid $10.00 a run.
J hasn't missed any time from work (he's too stubborn to call out sick) but he's gone in sick and feeling miserable for more days than he should have.
Did I have a job, I would have only missed two days, and been back to feeling fine after.

If you think you can't afford or don't have time to rest and sleep to get over an illness, it can and probably will cost you somewhere else later.