THE FLU!!!!!!!!!!

     I decided to write my second post for this week as a gripefest about the flu!  I came down with the virus two Mondays ago.  I had a high fever, chills, aches and pains, and even a fun time vomiting.  This condition kept me out of commission for the better part of three days.  I had to go into work for at least a couple of hours on Monday and Tuesday, but I didn't leave my bedroom from Tuesday afternoon until Thursday morning.  I did my best to try to keep the virus from spreading to my wife and children.  I slept on a different bed, I washed the sheets, pillows, and blankets, and I even disinfected everything I could have possibly touched while I was sick.  Unfortunately my efforts were unsuccessful.  My seven year old son woke up last Monday morning with a fever of 102.  I kept him home from school and did my best to try to nurse him back to a healthy level.  His temperature fluctuated throughout the day and then peaked at 103 at seven o' clock that night.  Shortly after that, the vomiting started.  Poor guy didn't know what hit him.  Needless to say, I kept him home for two more days.  I kept him quarantined from the rest of the family and I, once again, did my best to prevent the spreading of germs in an attempt to protect my wife and my daughter.  By Wednesday afternoon his fever was gone and he was back to being himself.  I thought it would be perfectly fine to send him back to school on Thursday morning.  At 12:30, the school nurse called me to tell me that he had been complaining of a sore chest and had a pretty bad cough.  The good news was that he still didn't have a fever.  I went ahead and picked him up from school so that he could get some more rest.  That night he was fine.  The next morning, he had no fever.  I went ahead and sent him on his way to school.  At 2 o'clock, I got another phone call from the school nurse.  This time it wasn't the cough, his fever was back in full force.  I called my mother and asked her if she could pick my daughter up at school while I took him to the hospital.  By this point I thought he might have something worse than the flu, like pneumonia.  After spending three hours at the hospital, I was told that it was just the flu and that I prematurely sent him back to school which caused the symptoms to come back.  Although this was somewhat of a relief to hear, I could have taken care of it by doing what I had been doing from the beginning.  Ready to get home and take care of my boy, I check my voicemail.  My mother had called several times while I was at the hospital, but I didn't want to interrupt the conversation I was having with the nurses and the doctor.  As I'm almost home, I get the dreaded news; my five year old daughter had a fever of 102 and had contracted the FLU!!!!!!!