Colds

Have you ever had a cold set in so fast that you only had half a day’s warning before feeling seriously sick?

Laura recently got over such a cold. We had travelled to see some of my family, and the morning of the day we were leaving she had complained that she wasn’t feeling good but it wasn’t anything that concerned her. I think she just had a headache at that point, and hadn’t felt off the day before even. We visited some of my family on our way out of town, and by the time we made it home (maybe 10 hours after waking up) she was having a hard time walking. She didn’t have much of a sense of balance and she was quickly losing strength to hold herself up on her two feet.

It was getting late at this point, we thought maybe being busy visiting and traveling around that she was really dehydrated and so we let her rest that evening and tried to force down as much water as she could stomach. Come the next morning she could hardly move from bed; we knew at that point she wasn’t just dehydrated. We loaded up (it took a while) and went to our primary care doctor just about 10 minutes away. They came out to us to give her a look over, which was interesting. I guess they’re afraid everyone has COVID? We were coincidentally also testing her for it, but that was really just at the behest of my workplace. They really wanted to know, and I suspect they thought we may have been exposed while traveling? I wasn’t worried about it, as we’re beyond cautious when it comes to COVID.

As expected (we found out a day or two later) she was not C-19 positive, but instead she had a bacterial infection in her ear. No wonder she was having a hard time walking!

A week of ear drops and antibiotics later, she’s back to normal. We’re grateful that our cautious attitude toward COVID seems to have paid off, however we’re not really sure why or how she ended up with the ear infection.

Although I do aspire to eventually be my own boss with the non-profit business, these kinds of unforeseen time-demanding life events make me grateful to have a job somewhere that cares about not just my health but the health of my family. Even though I’m currently in a middle-management level position (and thus slightly harder to cover when absent), they were more than understanding in giving me a few extra days off (as I should have been coming back from about a 3 day “vacation”) to tend to Laura and look after our kids. It’s also nice to not have to worry about getting paid for the time I missed, as my workplace has a decent PTO policy (I tend to accumulate at least one full day off per pay period).

Hope you’re all doing well and are healthy! While she was sick, I got Laura set up to be able to contribute to the site as well. So hopefully soon you’ll have the pleasure of reading some stories and thoughts directly from her.

Remember to be good to one another, we never know what challenges the people we meet are contending with.