It’s been an infirmary at the Sherrill house this spring with hacking and coughing rocking the house at all hours and enough trips to the doctor to send their kids through college.
Even I, the iron man of the household, was down for a week with the Warren County Funk – you know – that stuff folks get around here that the doctors can’t classify into words.
“It’s an upper respiratory infection,” they tell you when you get checked, if you’re one of the lucky ones. The unlucky ones get diagnosed with the flu or strep.
The Sherrill household batted .1000 during doctor visits. Jack had strep not once, but twice, in two weeks while the wife, who showed similar symptoms to my Warren County Funk, was diagnosed with the flu and had to take a week off.
She was not a happy camper when she got the diagnosis since she was prodded into taking the flu shot, which she has always avoided before. However, since she works in healthcare, there was a big push to get the shot.
What good did it do? None. She got the strain of flu she was vaccinated against. Meanwhile, when she didn’t get vaccinated in years past, she never got the flu.
Now, as to whether my funk was actually the flu, we will never know (although I hope it wasn’t since I went about doing my regular stuff while feeling under the weather). However, given the lesson learned by my wife, I’ll continue declining the flu shot.
Like I said, the widespread sickness in the Sherrill house was really surprising given I’m usually an iron man as is Jack. I’d say he has missed five total days of school in 13 years due to illness with most of those being for pneumonia. He’s missed more days of school for trips and church camps than he has for sickness. So, the fact he got hit twice with strep is doubly surprising.
However, after the smoke cleared there has been one iron man shrug off the funk. Henry, who will turn 10 this Thursday, has avoided getting so much as a sniffle (knock on wood) while everyone in the house around him has been funk-a-fide. This despite his unwitting attempt to join the roll of sickness.
It was just before Jack’s second strep diagnosis that my wife went into his room take his temperature. It turned up a little over 101. Henry, not appreciating what he was doing, picked up the thermometer my wife had just laid down and put it in his mouth. His mother immediately grabbed it away and told him what he’d done. You would have thought the world was coming to an end.
“I was just kidding, daddy,” he came crying to me like I could prevent him from catching strep. “I don’t want to be sick.”
Console as I might, Henry had a complete come apart, fearing he was going to catch what Jack had. However, more than a week later, despite his attempt to get sick, Henry remains the iron man of the family. Go figure.
Standard reporter Duane Sherrill can be reached at 473-2191.