All right, let me preface this post by saying that I love my husband beyond words. Really, I do. He is an absolute gem of a man, my best friend, and the most amazing father I could ever have dreamed of for our children. But I’ll be goddamned if he doesn’t turn into a total wiener when he gets sick.
Yesterday morning he said he didn’t feel too hot when we were getting ready to leave for work, so he took some ibuprofen. By mid-morning he was feeling much better, and we both thought maybe it was just a crappy morning. You know, those first-week-back-after-vaca blues and all.
Then all of a sudden he sent me an IM around lunch time saying he was going home. Eek! That was a quick turnaround for the worse. Achy, chills, just all around blech. Plus he had to bike home feeling like that. Total yuck; at least it was a nice day.
By the time I got home his fever had spiked to 104.5, which I learned by reading his Facebook status while running errands after work. When I saw that I was like oh great, I really don’t want to walk into a hotbed of sickness tonight, but I can’t exactly drive around forever with D. She needs supper.
When we got home I was trying to keep D out of the living room, where he had sweated all over the futon and not opened any windows to let the much cooler and fresher outside air in. Gross.
As I was toting her around the back part of the house I heard what I thought might have been R saying something. I wasn’t sure though, it was such a faint sound.
So we continued waving at ourselves in the bathroom mirror, when I heard it again. Yep, that’s definitely R saying something, but what?
I walked back out toward the living room to try to decipher his distress signal, when again, and slightly louder, I heard a croaking, “waaater“. Wtf? Did I miss the part of the afternoon where he dragged his near lifeless body through the Sahara Desert?
I’m not kidding – this was the most pitiful croak of a word I’ve ever heard. (and yes, i know i used “croak” twice in that description, but that’s literally what it was) In all the times R has been sick, he’s never gotten to the point where he’s had to just kind of open his mouth and let words crawl out.
So I was a little taken aback. “Did he just hoarsely whisper an order at me?” I wondered. Weird, but ok, he must be in pain, so I’ll refresh his water with new ice cubes and all. Wasn’t that nice of me?
When I took his water cup out and set it on the coffee table I asked if he wanted to move into the bedroom so D and I didn’t disturb him. I’ll do whatever I can for him when he’s ill, but trying to corral an 11 month old in 1 room for an entire evening is a near impossible feat that I’m not willing to attempt.
“In a bit,” he sputtered. All righty then, into the kitchen we went to try to pass the time until he moved and to get D some dinner.
Pretty soon he stumbled into the bedroom, where I heard him collapse onto the bed. Seriously, collapsed. I peeked in to make sure he was ok because it was such an odd sound, and sure enough, he was splayed out face down on the bed like he barely made it there.
This was getting weirder by the second. I know he had a high fever and all, but was something eating away at his motor skills too?
A few minutes passed, and much to my surprise he came back out, went into D’s bedroom to get his sweatpants (all his clothes are in there), and I thought he looked a little better. Good.
Nope, just kidding. After about 30 seconds of walking around he moaned, “red shirt”. Ok really, are you joking me now? What’s with the cryptic 2 word phrases?
Fortunately I knew what red shirt he was talking about because it had been in the living room when I got home. Otherwise I would’ve spent an hour trying to find the exact right red shirt in the sea of Badger gear he owns.
So I got him the red shirt and continued feeding D. A few more minutes went by and he was back up again, bumbling around. I have no idea what he needed that time, but when he headed back to the bedroom he barked, “food, vitamins”.
What??
Now seriously, you’re sick, you’re not dying. (p.s. i was very glad he woke up this morning because if i’d had all these thoughts last night and then he really did die, i would have felt incredibly awful) At this point I was still bewildered by and starting to take offense at the 1-word commands.
And these were commands, mind you, not even requests. I wouldn’t even have cared if he hadn’t said please, but was it really that taxing to add just a couple more words to make the complete sentence, “Could you get me some food?”
Oookkk. I gave D a few more pieces of hot dog to settle her squeals, since I could hear R moan louder with each one (yeah, try keeping an infant quiet when she’s hungry and not getting something to shove in her mouth fast enough and has no idea the meaning of the word “shh” nor any comprehension of what it means to be sick), then went in to ask him what he wanted.
Because I don’t know about you, but when I’m sick usually only 1 or 2 things even sound edible, so I certainly didn’t want to run the risk of bringing him the wrong thing. Lord knows what would have been barked at me then.
“I don’t know, just get something,” was his reply. Wow, this was turning into a really fun game.
So I made him a ham and cheese sandwich with a little mustard. I thought that sounded acceptible? And I put a multi-vitamin and a vitamin C tablet on his nightstand when I set the sandwich plate on the floor. Oh, and I made sure to close the bedroom door on my way out since one of the earlier orders was “dooooor“.
All this time I couldn’t help but thinking, “Are you seriously acting this wimpy because of a fever?” I’m sorry, I know how miserable he felt and how god-awful I feel when I’m sick like that (nothing is worse than the summertime flu), but come on. You have the flu. You haven’t lost a limb or just had a major surgery that rendered you bed-ridden.
Was there really a need to bark at me like that? Because in so doing you kind of erased my feelings of sympathy and replaced them with annoyance. And I know that is terrible – he was counting on me to help him and try to make things better, and I was doing what I could, but geez. This is the man who can do anything, literally, and he was acting like he had one foot in the grave.
Plus, he could take the time to update his Facebook status to let the world know how he was doing, yet he couldn’t even answer his wife when she asked him that question out of honest concern when she got home? Hmpf.
Fortunately his fever was down to 100 this morning, but he was still in no shape to go to work. And at least he was starting to form sentences again – my instructions were “Call the doctor. See if I can get an appointment today or tomorrow. Leave a message. My phone.” Yep, got it.
So hopefully I can get him in today and get rid of whatever this monster is that has taken over my beautiful husband and reduced him to a whining, incoherent, rude invalid. (his doctor’s office is only 2 blocks from our house, so he should be able to hobble over there ok) Anyone else’s husband or male partner take on this kind of sissy alter ego when he’s sick, or is it just mine?
I just hope it really is the flu and not some horrible brain-eating, incurable virus, because then I’ll really feel like a bitch. And raising D alone just wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.