I'm sure many of you have noticed my lack of meaningful posts over the last 7 days. The last period since my last post has been eventful and tough. On Thursday we were supposed to travel by car to the Netherlands 🇳🇱 This is normally about 8,5 hours, so we wanted to leave early, so we wouldn't arrive too late.
The night before our little one got sick in his bed, we thought that it might've been a reaction on the injections that he'd had that day at the pediatricians. However it didn't stop and almost every time we put him down he threw up again. As I am the 'designated' driver, my wife sent me to bed and she looked after him until he finally got to sleep. This did cause us to leave later than planned the next day.
The drive was pretty easy and uneventful, especially compared to the night before. We arrived in the late afternoon. The kids also went to bed pretty smoothless after dinner, so they must've been pretty exhausted from the drive. The eldest one spent quite some time watching and re-watching Rapunzel and the little one spent most of the time asleep. I had the music from my iPhone and my wife had my boring company.
The next day my wife woke up feeling bad and wondering why no one else had heard the little one in the night. I had woken up in the middle of the night without any blankets on me and freezing cold (I did mention we went to the Netherlands 🇳🇱, right 😉). We got ourselves and the kids ready and we went down for breakfast, not much later my parents joined us.
After breakfast things escalated slowly but steadily. The relationship between my parents and us is alright, but is not something that should be put to the test too much. So despite the way my wife felt, she wanted us to go out and do something, not to be stuck with my mother at home. In the meantime my situation slowly started to get worse as I started feeling sick in phases. We went to a pettingfarm, which would've been fantastic under most circumstances, however not on a cold winters' day in the Netherlands 🇳🇱 with strong winds and people prone to get sick. I felt extremely cold there, but I fought myself through it as my daughter and wife enjoyed themselves. Afterwards we met my parents for lunch in a typical Dutch sandwich shop. At this time I felt so bad, that I didn't even order anything. As my family was eating around me I ran out to get a breath of fresh air. Everyone sped up their lunch as I did this and followed me outside.
When we got home my stomach and bowels gave in and I spent most of the next hours in the toilet. In the mean time my wife was also feeling worse with flu-like symptoms and she got herself an appointment with a local doctor, she didn't make an appointment for me, but we figured if they saw me, they'd help me as well .... WRONG!!!
I'd brought the bucket that I'd getting myself familiar with over the past few hours and as we were waiting to be seen at the doctors I had to use it again. Obviously something had to come out, before I could start healing, but the feeling and noises are no fun for me or the people in my vicinity. When my wife was finally seen, he told me 'You know what's with you, right?' Off course it was pretty clear that I had a virus, but it would've helped if he could've given me something.
When we got home I went straight to bed with a shivering fit. I went under the blankets and even put my thermo-underwear on that I'd brought with me in case I'd have an opportunity to go running. This helped me to get warm and steady myself a bit. Unfortunately I was in no state to join my family for the special Friday-night dinner they'd arranged with catering for my Grandmothers' 90th birthday. Apparently I'd really missed out 😞 Several hours later, I felt well enough to go downstairs and join the family for a chat.
The following morning we woke up to find out that my mother had been sick during the night. My son was still struggling, my daughter was having little complaints and my wife was ok with her meds. So I made the decision that it would be better for us to go home a day earlier as planned.I felt I was ok to make the drive back and before the situation of either me or my wife would escalate it would be better to hit the road. When you're sick, you want to be at home anyway.
So that's what we did. My family fell asleep shortly after we drove off and I could make some time and kilometers before they woke up again. The drive home was pretty uneventful and we were back at around 19:00. This finished up an eventful several days, that definitely started with my son's illness. In the end at least 4 others have been infected with the same symptoms.
We are all still recovering, but this explains why I've been pretty much offline over the past several days. Hopefully I'm back now!
Doron