Our weekend

Spoiler alert: unless you enjoy discussing bodily fluids and the like, you might want to take a pass on this one.

Hello, everyone. How are you? This is a picture of my son and me from Friday.

See how he's cuddling on the couch with me? He doesn't ever do that. In case the face doesn't give it away, he wasn't feeling well. Neither was I.

This weekend, our whole family pretty much died. Too dramatic? I don't think so.

There's a little "blessing" about living in Austin called "cedar fever." It's actually an allergic reaction to the juniper ashei, also known as mountain cedar. The pollen is spiky (on a microscopic level) and can cause inflammation even in people without allergies. Well, most of us in this house have allergies, too, so we're having a lot of fun with the spike in levels that just hit.

D caught it first and has been struggling with it the longest. This weekend, she was spitting up blood. Fun. Good, fun times. She's been drinking a lot of chocolate milk and tea, and even consented to a dose of Flonase. It's a work-in-progress.

Mal started getting it next, followed quickly by me. His actually started as congestion and drainage due to teeth-cutting. In the past three weeks, he's gotten both of his top molars and at least one of his top eye teeth; the other one might be coming in, but he doesn't let me look in his mouth very much.

He's had a hard time sleeping, because he'll get choked on his drainage and cough and reposition... and then want to nurse. We're talking every fifteen minutes or so, awake or sleeping, actually. I'm pretty worn out and sensitive in the chestral regions.

Then, I started... sneezing at first, and literally blowing through all of our handkerchiefs (repurposed wipes James' mom made) in one day. I've gone through one roll of toilet paper since then. After the two days of sneezing, it became coughing. Coughing to the point of gagging and almost passing out. In the meantime, I've taken Claritin, Flonase, and bronchodilator pills every day.

This morning was the first time I've ever had asthma symptoms so awful that I couldn't do something with my kid that he wanted to do (all the way back to when Daphne was a baby; it never stopped me playing with her). He wanted to "ride the pony" by sitting on my hips whilst I lay in the floor. But I felt like I was going to suffocate and after one round of bouncing him, I had to get up. I hated it.

(Note: before you tell me I need to see a doctor, let me explain something: Every doctor I've seen gives me crap about refilling a rescue inhaler. They say I need to manage my asthma better so that I don't have to use the rescue inhaler, which they say should last more than a year and which I tend to go through in about three months when it's bad like this. A maintenance inhaler is $500 a month without insurance, and more than $300 WITH insurance. I'm not dying. I'm bothered and inconvenienced and my back hurts and it ticks me off, but I'm not dying. I can't spend $500 a month on a maintenance inhaler. Thank you for respecting that.)

I have learned that I can help my progress when I start coughing either by getting on my hands and knees if I'm in the floor or by putting my hands on the countertop and leaning over if I'm standing. It usually shortens the fit from coughs until I nearly black out to two or three good ones.

Meanwhile, Friday morning, I needed help. I needed more sleep, and I asked James to take Mal when he first woke up so that I could get just twenty minutes more sleep. But guess what? Yep. It had gotten to James, too, at this point. As an added bonus, James also got some kind of stomach bug, so spent a good deal of the weekend excusing himself from our company.

In the interim, I might have yelled at a lady from Chase who encouraged me to call back "on another phone" because she couldn't understand me as our connection was bad, after I'd been on hold 30 minutes, to find out why our HSA card wouldn't pay for our OTC Flonase - although I assume it's because they changed the rules to apply only to prescription drugs... AFTER THEY ALREADY HAD OUR MONEY AND THERE'S A PENALTY TO REMOVE IT. I asked her if I could call back without having to wait again, and she very cheerfully said, "Yes, ma'am; you can just call back on another phone." And I might have hollered something like, "I DON'T WANT TO CALL BACK ON ANOTHER PHONE. I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO WAIT AGAIN SO THANKS FOR NOTHING."

Then, as an added bonus, I immediately looked at my husband (remember the one who hadn't been able to help me with Mal that morning?) and said, "I NEED HELP AND NOBODY WANTS TO HELP ME."

>>>Edited to add: Mal was in the kitchen playing and started yelling random babble. Nice.

(Do you see a pattern here? I think I'm getting fragile in my old age. Actually, I've always been a little bit like this. I can hold it together though a lot... until I can't. Then, good god, it's messy.)

Now, I'm not proud of this, but James immediately emptied the dishwasher. Guys, he's a good man, and he puts up with my craziness, and I love him. He helps all of the time, and I'm totally in danger of taking that for granted. My pity party had nothing to do with him, except maybe my total lack of empathy for his illness since I kind of wanted my own space to be sick and have everyone else do everything so that I could lie down. I don't think that can happen again for several years, honestly.

Then, as an extra added bonus, I started my period last night. Which I hope explains my utter inability to deal with anything this weekend.

So... today, I haven't coughed much. I've blown my nose a lot, but no coughing. James went to work. Daphne's still asleep. Mal's been very very very very clingy and "nursey" and I keep trying to clear his nostrils, but he isn't very keen on that. I'm trying to distract him every time he asks to nurse, but once he starts crying and won't take orange juice, yogurt, a banana, cereal, or anything... I just let him. I'm sure I'll get the feeling back in my boobs some day.

There you go. There's the romantic weekend we had.

Just to let you know, we also went to breakfast Friday (which James had off) at an awesome barbeque trailer near here, then took a 3/4 family trip to the grocery store; we went to Mal's gym and later to Target to get James jeans and D a Minecraft gift card; and Sunday, the kids and I went to church. So we haven't just been rolling around in our misery. We're still living the life. It's just been a lot more intense the past few days. I'm ready for it to get boringer again.