Why It Sucks To Be Sick As a Parent

I miss being able to be sick. Not being sick; that’s different. I get sick all the time.

But as a child, I could lie in bed all day while someone brought me soup, ginger ale, and Vick’s VapoRub. If home alone, I’d make a nest of afghans and crunch through long tubes of Saltines while watching the channel of my choice. As the youngest, that was a rare and relished opportunity. I could read books, write in a journal, or just lie there, thinking and dreaming. I do occasionally lie around and think as an adult, but only in the middle of the night–accompanied by the cold sweats.

These days, there is no binge-watching of Law & Order. Being sick means doing the usual crap while feeling terrible. It involves large quantities of DayQuil or ibuprofen–whatever might mask the problem at hand. It involves staring helplessly at the computer monitor, willing it to make sense to my throbbing medicine head, praying that my fingers are typing a grant proposal and not a cry for help. It includes packing lunches, grocery shopping, and–worst of all–driving carpools while pretending to be goddamned cheerful. Plus, maybe the teeniest, tiniest nugget of growing resentment.

Two days before the end of my vacation last year, I tore a calf muscle frolicking on the beach. I felt it snap as I jumped off a rock–realizing before I landed that my future held frozen peas and painkillers instead of the planned hikes and swimming. Here’s where we were:

But instead of enjoying the trip of a lifetime, I hobbled painfully through a blur of family obligations and endless airports, ecstatically relieved when we arrived home. I had forgotten that a relaxed convalescence was out of the question.

To add to the adventure, the kids started vomiting as soon as we got home, for which I blame the flight from Auckland. Unable to walk, I crawled up and down two flights of stairs, fetching rags and cleaners, cursing the fact that we had moved the laundry from the entry closet into the basement. You read that right: crawling.

I escaped briefly to a meeting, but returned soon with urgency. Grabbing a bucket and crawling up the stairs, I held my hair back and waited for the inevitable. Meanwhile, Miss 13 needed some attention. Her first day back at school had been tumultuous; she needed to debrief and hear some empathetic mom-isms.

Unable to hear over my own dry heaves, I had to keep asking her to repeat herself, and due to the aforementioned injury, I couldn’t kneel. I struggled to find a position which allowed me to hang properly over the side of the bucket while pretending to listen. I didn’t want to throw my back out while throwing up–again. This was absurd. Can’t I even focus on my own needs under these circumstances? But the girl did not stop talking until steaming jets flared repeatedly, at which point she just looked annoyed before retreating to her room in a huff.

Fail.

Though my heart will break when my girls head to college–and though I will mourn their departure like the end of the world–I will embrace ordinary illness as a long-lost friend. I will take to the couch with a remote and a relish unseen since falling in love.