We had to fluff up the sick pen at the Home Place this week. Influenza A hit the kids with a fever that only modern medicine seems to be able to tame. In an unusual turn of events, the oldest subject was rendered completely useless and proceeded to miss almost an entire week of school much to his dismay. How will he ever catch up?? Praise be for late starts, subzero temps, and no school on Friday. This disease is a tricky one folks, because about the third day, that fever takes a little break and we all thought he could go back to school. Before we knew it, Big Bud had overdone himself and was forced to a hot bath, a third day of mom's home remedies, and an early bedtime. Such misery! He tried convincing us every morning that he was well enough to go to school behind blood shot eyes, a 102-degree fever, and a red Rudolph nose. Meanwhile, little brother was licking every doorknob like a lunatic because it was an utter injustice that he had to go to school while big brother was having all the fun at home. He begged every morning to have his temperature taken multiple times before each late start to see if he was showing any signs of weakness. Finally, one week after big brother went down, little brother was able to manifest his disease and start his own stay in the sick pen.
Now, some of you may know and some of you may be wondering where the term "sick pen" comes from. This is actually a real place on the farm where sick critters are quarantined and nursed back to health away from the larger herd. It may be appalling to think that I generally compare my kids to livestock, but my formative years of learning about medicine were spent shoving pinky-sized boluses down throats and bottle-feeding electrolytes every two to three hours. A person tends to fall back on that training with her real-life kids. The basic concepts of animal and human care are all very comparable. The notion of quarantine is often practiced when an animal generally needs just a little time to heal and not be harassed by the outside herd/world. It works well for kids, too. Please don't call CPS because they did have full run of the house and office. The sick pen is a figurative term (i.e. they are not confined to a tiny cage) that my kids find comical.
The other funny part in all of this is that Mr. Peters took two and half days off work to play nursemaid. By the end of day one, father and eldest son had managed to locate a 4-wheeler three hours away that is now a part of our fleet of marginal vehicles that sometimes run. Day two was spent sprucing up the back room of my office building and setting up the loft area so the kids have the cool hangout I envisioned them enjoying five years ago. It has some very 1968 wood paneling, missing ceiling tiles from a previous roof leak, a vinyl Case IH sign we found blowing down our street, and a Scentsy warmer to homey it up a little. Now they can watch their mind-numbing YouTube videos in even more seclusion while pretending they didn't hear what I asked them to do. The young subjects agreed that it was one of the best dad day offs in the history of dad taking days off even if they were sick!
And, here we are on week two of the disease which unfortunately had spread to grandpa before we knew what was really going on. Three trips to the doctor in five days and everybody seems to be on the mend. Knock on wood, the sick pen managers have made it through unscathed. Surely, we had this disease back in 1989 which granted us immunity. Our parents likely did not take us to a doctor but instead told us to get out of our pajamas and go out and do chores because "a little fresh air will do you good." Life sure is different these days, but one thing is for sure, I'll gladly take care of the sick pen any day for a little extra time with the boy-o-boys between appointments, emails, and naps. Welcome Home.
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