When I was a kid, car-related calamities chronically beset our family vacations. Reliably, it seemed about every other time we took a trip to my grandpa's cottage or my grandma's house in Chicago, something went wrong with one of our classic beaters. This left my parents to struggle to remedy the situation while simultaneously dealing with whiny, crabby kids.
Now raising my own kids, it seems we are similarly cursed, only with a different affliction: illness. These days, my kids don't get sick especially often, but they seem to have a knack for catching bugs right as we're about to embark on a trip or go to a family gathering. The situation is rarely simple: a raging fever or profuse vomiting that says unequivocally, no, do not do this. No, most often it's a mild illness lying in wait, maybe threatening to become more serious. It always feels like a catch-22. If we proceed with our plans and hope for the best, the worst inevitably occurs. If we nix our plans everything will turn out just fine and we'll be smacking our foreheads at our over-cautiousness, disappointing the kids for nothing. Scrapping long-made plans is a hard decision.
Take for example the time we went ahead and took our Christmas trip to Chicago despite the fact that both Ben and Paul had had stomach flu in the past several days. We knew we were playing a game of Russian Roulette, but we felt really torn about canceling our trip. And we shot ourselves in the head. Gus began vomiting the night we arrived, and hours later Mark and I succumbed, spending a night of pure hell in our hotel room, Gus screaming, moaning and groaning all night long, Mark and I feeling increasingly awful.
The curse struck again this past weekend. Gus had had diarrhea most of last week. Thursday night he vomited. We were supposed to leave Friday afternoon for a weekend trip to Jellystone Campground in Fort Atkinson with Mark's family. Believe me, I seriously pondered staying home with Gus. But like I said, it's not an easy choice to make. The Thiel family spent a long time just hashing out a weekend that would work, and some members of Mark's family we don't get to see more than two or three times a year. We really wanted to be able to go with all of us.
Gus seemed to be doing better Friday morning. He didn't vomit anymore and was eating normally. Reluctantly, we set forth. By the time we stopped for lunch in Waupun, things weren't looking great. Gus was droopy and not eating much. He lay on the bench at Culver's looking unwell. Foolishly though, on we pressed. It was more of the same for G after we arrived at the campground. He asked to go to sleep before 7 p.m. - extremely uncharacteristic for him. He went right to bed and we got in a few of hours of visiting. When Mark brought Paul up to the sleeping loft for bed at about 10:15, he smelled something foul and immediately realized Gus had vomited. All over my brother- and sister-in-law's bedding and air mattress.
Feeling that we had no choice, we decided to pack Gus into the car and drive home at 11 p.m. We left Ben and Paul, and Mark planned to return early Saturday morning. We rolled into the driveway completely exhausted at 1 a.m. Luckily, Mark and the boys were able to salvage the rest of the weekend while Gus and I recuperated at home.
I think I've finally learned my lesson. We'll be erring on the side of caution from now on. At this point, head-smacking at home is looking much better than cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night in a strange place.
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