A parent's relationship to sickness

If I was sick more than once a year, I don’t remember it. Excluding periods of childhood and the occasional hospitalization, for over a decade I’d never been sick more than once per year; the kind of sick where I’d think, “I should stay home and recover from this.” All that changed with Graham.

The inability to recover. When I’d get sick, even with a fever, one full day’s rest was all I needed to recover. When Graham came, I said goodbye to recovery days. Amie and Graham’s immediate needs became a priority, and sickness had to wait. Which led to the next change…

The endless sicknesses. One day, maybe two, was all I ever needed to recover. Now the best I hope for is to keep the suffering low. As I write this, I’m now into my eighth day of a combination cough, clogged nose, and intermittent body ache. And the last stage (I hope)

The creative sickness. Whatever I might have caught before was whatever my friends and colleagues were peddling. Usually the garden-variety cold; sometimes a fever. Now I keep a living petri dish in the room next door. Graham not only picks up illnesses from other children that I’ve never heard of, a year’s observation indicates that he may actually generate new strains without outside intervention.

Sickness was a foreign invader in my past life, and I assaulted it with overwhelming force the moment signs appeared. Now it’s the annoying limp I’ve learned to manage.