Quarantine

I'm about to write a sentence I didn't think I was going to get the chance to write in the forseeable future. Wait for it...

I am currently the healthiest member of my family!

They've all got the lurgy, some kind of horrible flu-type thing. First to succumb was Little Sis, who came home from work unexpectedly a few days ago while I was having a cup of tea with mum. She staggered in on the arm of her current boyfriend (also co-worker), who'd driven her home after their boss basically told her to go home, go directly home, do not pass Go, do not collect £200, and get into her bed with a hot drink and some Beechams. She was not in a good way. Shivering, fever, face and glands all puffy, nose running like a tap, kept falling into things, the lot.

She's not good with being ill at the best of times - a stubbed toe can be a calamity sometimes, unless she has a party to go to - and I think that's why mum seemed to be swaying between "oh god, Mary's illness started with flu, what if it happens to her too?!" and "good grief, she didn't milk it this much when she was a four-year-old!" (these are paraphrases).

Then mum came down with it, two days later, and combined with other stuff that's up, she's become totally laid up in bed. That's not like her at all. A few years back there was a possibility of her needing spinal surgery (didn't happen in the end) and the biggest problem was going to be how on earth to get her to lie down for several weeks.

And now my stepdad thinks he's getting it too. He's getting something - he's diabetic and whenever he's fighting a bug of some sort his sugar levels go wacky, and they've been doing that since just before Christmas, but now he's starting to feel rough as well.

I've been laid up most of today anyway, but that's just the usual mundane ME/CFS symptoms letting me know they haven't abandoned me, and since I've got all this stuff*, and have developed alternative ways of Doing Things, I've still been able to shuffle round the flat, get a drink, eat a sandwich, etc. I'm 85% certain I'm not infected. I hope I get a good day tomorrow though, because it's hard to think of anything that would be quite as satisfying as ringing them up and me being the one saying "do you need me to get you anything from the shop?" That said, I reckon that my stepdad's sense of humour would lead him to ask for six pints of milk and ten pounds of potatoes, so perhaps I'll save it until Pip can help me.


*I have cheered up considerably since I posted that photo, now I think of it as useful stuff that helps me have a better quality of life, rather than a depressing indication of how much my life has changed. And I have better flat shoes now, too.