Friday
If you want to get a haircut, you ask your Mother-In-Law to come watch the kids.
If your Mother-in-Law comes to watch the kids, your youngest is sure to ham it up and play especially sick.
If your youngest hams it up and plays especially sick, she will tell you he didn’t get off the couch all morning.
If she tells you he didn’t get off the couch all morning, you will take his temperature and decide he needs to go to the doctor – before the weekend.
If you decide he needs to go to the doctor, you will take him in – despite the impending “Wintry Mix” and possible ice storms.
If you take him in, he will miraculously become healed in the Sick Waiting Room.
If he miraculously becomes healed in the Sick Waiting Room, he will have to touch, rub, and become one with all the surfaces.
If he becomes one with all the surfaces, you will become very anxious.
If you become very anxious, he will become further energized by your anxiety.
If he becomes further energized by your anxiety, he will begin jumping and screaming maniacally.
If he begins jumping and screaming maniacally, he will attract the attention of the other children in the Sick Waiting Room.
If he attracts the attention of the other children in the Sick Waiting Room, they will begin to play together.
If they begin to play together, your anxiety will triple.
If your anxiety triples, they will amp up their game to running around a column while rubbing their hands, cheeks, and possibly tongues around it like they were seeing how many germs it takes to reach the center of a column.
If they amp up their game to seeing how many germs it takes to reach the center of a column, you will begin listening to their Grandmother’s phone call to try and ascertain what they’re in for.
If you try and ascertain what they’re in for, you will learn that their sister is currently being observed to see if she needs to go back to the hospital for her raging and incurable stomach virus.
If you learn that their sister is currently being observed to see if she needs to go back to the hospital for her raging and incurable stomach virus, your anxiety will give you a facial tic so extreme that the kids in the Well Waiting Room will think you’re winking at them.
If you get facial tic so extreme that the kids in the Well Waiting Room think you’re winking at them, you will try to mitigate the future germ damage to your household by restraining your toddler.
If you try to mitigate the future germ damage to your household by restraining your toddler, his wiggling and fighting will make the seconds tick by so slowly that you are convinced the best course of action for your ongoing sanity is to get up and leave.
If you become convinced the best course of action for your ongoing sanity is to get up and leave, right before you do, you will get called back (after one hour and fifteen minutes of Sick Waiting Room Seventh Layer of Hell.)
If you finally get called back, you will, in a fit of anxiety-induced-word-vomit, tell your doctor of all of your trials in the waiting room.
If you tell your doctor of all of your trials in the waiting room, you will follow up by asking her if she happens to have any dissolvable anxiety pills on her.
If you follow up by asking her if she happens to have any dissolvable anxiety pills on her, your toddler will once again be energized by your admittance of the A word, and will yell, “All Aboard!!”, because, you see, he is the Train Conductor.
If your toddler plays Train Conductor with the stirrups, you will stop to tweet the moment, during which your toddler will seize the opportunity to find a well-hidden stray cup of water left by another child.
If your toddler finds a well-hidden stray cup of water, you will nearly break your nose (again) trying to tackle him before it reaches his lips.
At this point, you will begin praying for quick and painless deaths for each of your family members, as it is clear that all of your days are severely numbered.
Later Friday
After a nap (because after that visit there was no way you were doing anything else before naptime), you go to the pharmacy to fill your son’s prescription.
If you go to the pharmacy to fill your son’s prescription, the pharmacist will sympathize with you and tell you that she, too, has been sick for a week – with a really difficult strain of strep throat – and will cough, right before she mixes your son’s antibiotic.
If she coughs into your son’s antibiotic, you will again begin praying for quick and painless deaths for all of you – and maybe a slightly painful one for her.
Saturday
Your husband has to go to the doctor and gets two shots and a prescription.
Sunday
You and your daughter fall to illness.
Tuesday, Too Late to Go To The Doctor
Your illness worsens, now including a fever.
Wednesday
Your illness most definitely needs a doctor, but the entire city is shut down for the snowstorm that you’ve wanted all year long, so you tough it out and eagerly look forward to the distraction of a beautiful, thick white snow.
If you look forward to a snow, it will not come. And you will wait for eight hours, blowing your nose on every soft disposable surface in your house, not daring to leave due to impending doom, while it rains.
If you wait for eight hours while it rains, you will watch the wall-to-wall snow news all day long in hopes of an encouraging word about when you will get snow, but all you will see are thousands of happy snowstormees who live ever-so-slightly north of you.
If you see happy snowstormees, you will become not happy. But you will still wait, while it rains.
It gets dark, and it rains.
It gets darker, and your power goes out.
Then it starts snowing.
The children will hurry out in their snow gear, eager to make snowmen and snow angels and snow cream. Meanwhile, you hold the flashlight and jog in place on the porch so as to not let your feverish chills overtake you.
You get maybe a quarter inch of snow. That will melt by morning.
Meanwhile, you continue to be inundated by everyone else’s amazing snowstorm dreams, while your own dreams are delirious because…fever.
Thursday
If you didn’t get the snowstorm you so hoped for, you will look at the bright side – that you can finally go to the doctor.
If you finally go to the doctor, the exhaustion from the week will overcome you and you will accidentally cry.
If you accidentally cry, your doctor will offer you antidepressants.
If your doctor offers you antidepressants, you will consider asking him for dissolvable anxiety pills for the next Pediatrician’s visit, and then wonder if he could instead prescribe you a trip to Fiji…
While you’re wondering if your doctor can prescribe you a trip to Fiji, one of your kids gets all cozy and places their lips near a surface, almost assuredly picking up a new germ.
If your kid picks up a new germ, the cycle starts all over again.
And by the time it’s done, it’s most likely time for you to get another haircut.
Oh, Rachel, at least you are able to maintain your sense of humor! . I hope you all are better soon.
Your awful week makes mine (in which I had minor surgery) seem like a piece of cake. I hope you feel better soon! Also, I am totally on board with this Sick and Well waiting room thing. I think that needs to be SOP for all doctor’s offices. That way I won’t spend the whole time sitting perched on the very edge of my chair, clutching my purse in my lap, afraid that the slightest stray touch of any surface will expose me to someone’s Super Flu-Bola.
I hope y’all are well soon! I do love your sense of humor, and please know you are not alone with the miraculous healing of sick little ones in the waiting room. I feel like I always need to explain to the receptionist that, yes, my child was most certain lethargic before we arrived here.
PS– They initially called for any where from 3-10 inches for Wednesday night into Thursday morning for my area. And were still predicting the temp to drop even on the the 11 o’clock news that night. ALL our school districts announced Wed at 3pm “NO school on Thursday due to the Winter Storm that is coming”
It Rained. Rained. Nothing but rain.
I’m still mad about it.
We’ve had the same week. All of us sick since last Saturday. You have my sympathies.
My two year old likes to lay down on public bathroom floors. Such a joy.
Wow. So sorry to hear. But I laughed out loud at Noah’s display in the waiting room. Hope you are all healthy again soon!
I have a box of chocolates w your name on it coming your way. And a fruit spread. It looked good and tasted good. Meanwhile, I lift my glass to you. I don’t have kids, but if I did I doubt any of us would survive.
I need to take a Xanax just from reading that!