The Milkman of Human Kindness

Yup. What I was downplaying as a heavy, chesty cold (with fever) at the weekend was this morning diagnosed as ... dun-dun-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun - swine 'flu.

On my BIRTHDAY, and EVERYTHING.

(I say "diagnosed" - the doctor didn't order a test, but she says it's the obvious conclusion.)

More to the point, it's also what the Feaster has had in parallel with me over the past few days, AND it's what the Oyster suddenly came down with yesterday evening. He's currently in the oh-god-wretched phase, while the Feaster and I are definitely over the worst (thank any relevant deities). niallm may or may not have had it the week before last. If he didn't, I suppose he'll get it next...

I've had muscle aches and cold symptoms since last week, with an unshakeable headache since about Saturday. My fever spiked on Sunday night, and had more or less abated by Tuesday morning. I spent Monday completely out of it, and Tuesday maybe half there. Today I am up because I have to be, but if I didn't I wouldn't. Niall and K have been running around looking after everybody, because they are made of solid gold.

The Feaster has been physically attached to an adult damn near constantly since Sunday, including seven- or eight-hour feeding sessions each night.

The Oyster is on Tamiflu, but since the Feaster and I are on the mend we're not.

I thought it was quite amusing the way the doctor danced around the actual moment of diagnosis. She first asked if the Oyster had any ongoing health issues, and then she chatted some more about the symptoms, and then put her head on one side and said something really coy, like "had you any feeling yourself about it, or...?" And it was only when I said I assumed I had 'flu of some sort, whether swine or otherwise, that she nodded and said the likelihood was that it was the OMG HORROR OF TEH TERRIFYING OINK ITSELF. Whereupon a dark cloud covered the face of the sun, and a rain of frogs fell from the ceiling of her consulting room, which I thought was pretty tacky, but there you are.

Anyway. We'll be back up and running in due course. Meanwhile, this headache had better go away, or there'll be trouble.

This week has been ... about as varied as I'm able for. Possibly more so, in fact, considering how it's ending up. But I get ahead of myself. Allow me to give you a précis:

( Blow by blow )

I'd quite like a quieter week next, kthxbai.

My grandmother with the pneumonia is on the mend.

We sprang her from chokey on 23 December, in time for her long-booked hairdresser appointment, and she enjoyed the Christmas festivities, although she required a lot more care than usual. (High point: being carried down my parents' narrow, screechy basement stairs backwards in a wheelchair.) Her hands were very swollen from fluid retention, so she couldn't (e.g.) feed herself, and the drugs she was on were making her very woozy.

Christmas was really the only reason she came home so soon, of course. On the 27th she was readmitted, on the grounds that having oxygen and nurses to hand was better for her at that time. I saw her the day before yesterday, and she was immeasurably improved. Hands back to normal, reading, conversing clearly. She should be coming out this afternoon.

She'll be 89 in May. It's unclear whether this episode is a blip or part of an overall acceleration in her decline. But for the moment, we're all very relieved.

This evening I ate a BIG CHEESY DINNER for the first time in over a year. OH MILK, HOW I HAVE MISSED YOU!

It was a 'speriment. Fiachra has turned six months, and his gut lining may have matured enough to tolerate my eating dairy food.

So far, we haven't been able to tell if he has a sensitivity (he's had some intestinal discomfort following accidental milk-ingestion by me, but it's been unclear whether it's within his normal range). Therefore, rather than pussyfooting around with traces of butter here and crypto-yoghurt there, I decided to go for something unambiguous, to wit, a gougère made with butter and cheese. (Verily, there was NOMMING.)

There's also a chance I'll react myself, of course. Two hours on, no sign of anything untoward (or at least, no clear sign: I am, naturally, prophesying DOOM at every little burp...). Fiachra has obligingly refrained from teething this week, which should make things easier to interpret.

Now we play the waiting game.

1. Physical health
Rotten. I've just finished my third course of heroic-sounding antibiotics (Pinamox, Distaclor, and now Zithromax, which one can't help pronouncing in a sort of wrestling compere type voice - ZITHromaaax!!! - like that) since 31 January, not to mention echinacea, salt-water gargling (ugh), hot honey and citrus, and homeopathic pills, and my tonsils are STILL covered in damned spots. I'll phone the GP tomorrow, and he'll either fax a prescription for more antibiotics to my local pharmacy or ask me to come for yet another consultation. Argh. He wants me to see an ENT specialist to discuss whether I need to have the putrid little things cut out. I'm not a particularly squeamish person, but tonsillectomy? Eww. I'm convinced they do it with a melon-baller.

2. Mental health
Rocking! Rarely better! Whee!

3. Children
Magnificent.

Unny's imagination is a thing of joy and wonder. Yesterday, he was a gruffalo (female) who kept a café that served "everyting in de werreld" - except, as it turned out when I tried to order it, omelette. I was the "lovelier", whose job, I was informed, was "lovelying" the gruffalo - i.e. cleaning the purple prickles all over her back, grooming her fur, polishing the poisonous wart at the end of her nose, etc. Later, he was a miner who mined some precious stones for me to sell so that I can buy things while I'm on maternity leave. He wants a pet baby elephant. Or failing that, a real mineshaft in our back garden (not just a toy one).

Fiachra, meanwhile, is ALL about the standing up. ALL ABOUT IT. And he's reaching for things, and exploring things with his mouth, and learning to laugh, which may keeell me ded. (Mind you, nothing - nothing in de werreld - could possibly be cuter than the little euhh sound he makes after sneezing.)

4. Whirlybrain
Whirr, whirr, whirlybrain,
gently through the night,
whirrily, whirrily, whirrily, whirrily,
life is but an infinite to-do list.

I refer, inter alia, to my half-finished novel draft, the two rather excellent quilt design ideas I've had in the past fortnight, six or eight potential next knitting projects, a nifty window-seat that there's no way I'll find time to build for at least a year, the vast logistical and financial extravaganza that is our extension plan, the future of my working life, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

Unfortunately, I need to get well first, which is proving a challenge.

Make that sixteen. SIXTEEN hours without food or water (apart from the glucose drink I had at 9:50). Three hour-long chunks of sitting on an uncomfortable padded bench in an airless waiting room, with 98FM playing at a volume just too loud to read through and too soft to make out without concentrating, punctuated by bloodlettings. I did get a lot of cardigan knitted, mind you, so it wasn't all bad.

On my release I shambled up the road, stopping first in Cafe Sol for a smoothie to keep me going, and then at Dunne and Crescenzi, where I sank into a chair and husked "mounds of food, please" at the waiter, and after about six very floaty and nauseous weeks found myself in a position to tuck very carefully into bruschetta al pomodoro and salsiccia e fagioli alla Toscana and salumi misti. And now I feel almost human again. Almost. (I've to phone tomorrow for test results. This seems entirely secondary, somehow!)

I do go on about it, I know, but foodlessness is really not my bag, baby. I'm still half-amused, half-gobsmacked at a conversation Niall and I had a while ago, where I finally realised that he'd been assuming all along that my experience of hunger was more or less like his - i.e. a mild distraction, perhaps shading to discomfort in extreme cases - and therefore that my behaviour and reactions when I hadn't eaten were totally over the top (which, if you accepted his premise, was a reasonable attitude to take). He was surprised to hear about the pain and the dizziness and the loss of coordination and the weepiness and the panic.

It's a genuine physical reaction, but I'm uncomfortably aware how psychological it is, too: last night, although I had a substantial Condemned Man's snack at 20:45 (fast began at 21:00), hunger pains and panic had set in by midnight. I know they wouldn't have been there if I'd been looking forward to my customary vat of porridge at 8:30.

I wonder if I'll ever get over this? It's bloody inconvenient.

Yesterday, the Oyster and I went to Dublin Zoo with jane_the_23rd as part of her birthday celebrations. And it was enormously cool, and lo, there was a BABY ORANG UTAN, which was one of the cutest, shaggiest little animals ever in the history of ever. (Actually, it's nearly a year old. But still exceptionally cute.)

Anyway.

The baby went over to its mother and began to feed. Jane and I squeed more than somewhat and showed Oisín the baby having mama-milk. Another family joined us in watching, and then the following little illustration of entrenched gender assumptions played out:

Mother Orang Utan: *nurses*
Baby Orang Utan: *suckles*
Radegund, Jane, Oisín and Other Family: *ogle excitedly*
Mother Orang Utan: *yawns briefly, displaying long, brownish teeth*
Mother of Other Family (to children): Look at the teeth on him! He's been eating too many sweets, that fellow!
Jane and Radegund: ...
Mother Orang Utan: whatevah
Baby Orang Utan: *switches sides and carries on feeding*

Sigh.