I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
January 3, 2011
>After The Legendary Pneumonia Christmas of 2008 and The Unforgettable Swine Flu Christmas of 2009, I didn’t take any chances when it came to Christmas 2010.
While other kids spent the week before Christmas snorfling up germs in the playpits of fast food restaurants or exchanging sneezes with green-snotted preschoolers at the local Chuck E. Cheese, I kept my eyes on the prize of a vomit and snot-free Christmas- and kept my children from any place that seemed even remotely unsanitary. Which was pretty much everywhere.
Instead, we kept close to home, playing games, watching movies, and running light errands. Sure it was a little dull, but I reasoned to myself that after Christmas, there would be plenty of time for playdates and special outings.
And my caution paid off. For the first time in years, not one Ferrier woke up sick on Christmas morning, and as I heard tales from friends of Yuletide stomach bugs and unsilent nights filled with the sounds of phlegmy coughing, I congratulated myself on my own pre-Christmas quarantine.
“The kids have done so well this year,” I said exultantly to Hubs the night after Christmas. “I mean, neither one of them has gotten sick at all this season. Why, I can’t even remember the last time either one of them was sick!”
Famous. Last. Words.
The next day, I took my kids and a neighbor friend to an indoor playcenter for a few hours and that evening, I noticed an unusual dullness in my daughter’s eyes. By nightfall, the coughing had begun. Followed by the fever. And when I finally took her in to see the doctor Thursday morning after three days without relief, I was given a diagnosis.
Pneumonia.
PNEUMONIA.
$#@!#!!
Thus, while others were taking their children to museums the week after Christmas and to shopping malls and libraries and city parks, we spent another week at home. Punky’s fever went up and down and up and down, Bruiser was bouncing off the walls, and I sat in a corner, babbling to myself, pulling out my hair in tufts, and rocking back and forth. By Saturday night, Punky’s fever had finally reached permanent (fingers crossed!) low-grade status and I looked forward (oh so forward!) to things finally returning to normal.
But late that night, I awoke once again to the sounds of coughing and crying.
Not from Punky.
From Bruiser.
Pneumonia.
Part deux.
The next morning, I took both kids in for a visit to the pediatrician on call. By the looks of the waiting room, half the parents in my neighborhood had turned out as well, accompanied by sluggish, bleary-eyed children who sniffled and complained of sore throats. As I signed in at the front desk, a dad beside me said hello and listened as I told the woman behind the counter that both my kids now had pneumonia.
“Pneumonia, huh?” he said. He gave me the tired, hollow-eyed half smile of a fellow soldier in the midst of battle. “Are you going to write about this?”
Well, sir? What else do I have to write about?
2011 is soooooo not off to a good start…
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