The attack of the swine flu

While you suckers were out doing the usual shiftless weekend blah, we here at DarwinCatholic were doing groundbreaking medical research: we survived the swine flu.

"Really?" you gasp. Well. The doctor said that they weren't testing flu strains right now. But it might have been swine flu! It was definitely the flu at any rate. Fever cough chills nose eyes headache bodyache weepy fussy: that flu.

One by one, the children were overcome. This was not the style of flu in which everyone just slept for twelve hours at a stretch. Oh no. After industrial-strength doses of ibuprofen, the youngsters were raring to go, until the medicine wore off and there was total collapse. Judicious applications of Benadryl to treat the sniffles and the runny eyes ensured that each child got sufficient rest.

I already see different approaches to suffering in the children. The oldest moans and lows as if she were dying. The second gets weepy but tries to be stoic. The third curls up in a ball (a weepy ball) and looks bleary. The baby wants to nurse all the time. This we allow, because he is only just one, after all.

Darwin has been spared the ravages of sickness (so far) but I've come down with -- well, not the flu. There's no fever, but there the sore throat and the racking, rasping cough that makes the throat raw, and now, the lack of voice. That makes it tricky to yell across the house at the mostly-recovered children trying escape outside. It also wreaks havoc with our school schedule, because I can't really read aloud, and the kids are still just fractious enough that their attention spans are seriously low -- except for old cartoons on youtube, which they could watch until their brains run out of their ears.