Inoculations

by Phil

It is my hypothesis that the sole purpose of toddlers within world ecology is the harboring and continued existence of viruses. Sure, within human relationship they offer their parents all sorts of joy and blah blah blah. But within the world as a whole, they are essentially virus farms.

Simply, they are germ bags.

I say this now because my son has shared his virus harvest with me and we have both been intensely sick all week.

My son has had a rough week and a half. Last Tuesday, we took him into the doctor for his sixteen month check up where he received 4 vaccinations. He had a slight reaction to them, which led to grumpiness and fever for the next two days.

That led right into the cold that he picked up somewhere. The cold involves fevers, chills, and, on top of a runny nose, a general stuffiness. So while he can't breath out of his nose, he can at least produce lots of mucus from it to run down his chin.

If that wasn't bad enough, he's also teething right now. Some of his molars are breaking through, leading to a lot of discomfort and anger. And drooling.

So he's breathing through his mouth because of the stuffiness but there's the added bonus of copious drooling because of the teething.

So lovely.

And wouldn't you know it, this happens to be the week when he picks up on the fact that our faces have different parts, all of which have names that he needs to be told immediately. Not only does his face have all of these parts but so does Dads!

Little tiny hands going right from pointing at his own snotty-drooly-mouth-nose-area to comparing those same areas on my face! Oh, and yes, those are my eyes you're poking. Thank you for the inoculations.

I seem to be about 24 hours behind him in my symptoms. It's like watching some horrible, tiny version of my future self struggle through the day with no power to change course.

Is it any wonder that I woke up this morning feeling as those someone laid asphalt over my lungs during the night? This insane congestion has settled into my chest that is so physical in nature it's hard to believe. I've never had the opportunity to compare and contrast, to be able to tell that my left lung is much more phlegm-filled than my right. I'd like to thank my son for expanding my horizons in wholly new ways that I never could have anticipated.

At this point the two of us are just struggling through as miserable heaps of misery. I'm hoping we'll come out the other side by Monday. This is his first major cold. It's kind of heartbreaking to watch a toddler go through all of this at the same time with no real understanding of what's going on or ability to do anything about it.

Luckily I have married some sort of superhero that has sailed through this miasma of pain unscathed. I don't know how she has escaped this horrible fate but I wish her luck on her virus-free trip through this life.

Don't laugh at me. I was once like you.