GRRR...More illness!!!

We cannot seem to get well and stay well. I was hoping we could make it until spring break where we could all get a chance to recoup and the kids can get away from the petri dish that is the school. No, such luck.

We've all been fighting a bit of a cold. I had a bit of a sore throat with mine but it wasn't horrible. D was complaining of the same thing over the weekend but none of us had fevers and most of the symptoms were relieved by motrin/decongestant.

Last night I was sitting with my kitty on my lap. I'm allergic to kitties so when my eye started to itch I didn't think too much about it right away. I had just taken something for my sinuses so I figured it would stop in a few minutes when that kicked in. It continued to itch, even after changing my shirt, washing my face and hands. It bugged me a lot but I went to bed early and thought I would be ok in the morning.

First thing this morning I realized I couldn't open that eye and now not only did it still itch horribly, it hurt too, a lot, like a pin being driven into it. I got up, looked at in the bathroom and recognized the signs. I had pink eye!! Now, I had pink eye last year. I got it from the boys, who both had it. It's very contagious and I figured if I had it, everyone would. Sure enough, D got up and had the same thing, DH got up same thing, G his eyes weren't' as bad but I knew it was only a matter of time.

Last time D had pink eye my dr just automatically wrote a prescription to treat the whole house because of how contagious it is. I had some left from that time, it was still good, but not nearly enough to treat all 4 of us for a week. So we had to make a trip to the dr's. Since D seemed the worse, and had missed the most days of school, I figured we would take him and then ask about a big prescription for the whole family. DH amazingly took the day off of work. He has *never* in 17 years of marriage ever called up his employer and said "I won't be in". I think he is learning that you can't work all the dang time and he found an article online that explained how contagious it was. He touches a lot of computers during the day and I told him he could infect the whole office by the end of the day and everyone would hate him. He came to the dr's with us too.

My dr is such a great guy, I just love him. He has great bedside manners and is great with the boys. He checked D over and he's fine, just a cold but he did indeed have a wicked case of Pink Eye, as do I, as does DH. He gave us prescription for both the eye drops and an ointment for D's eyes at night. He also gave me a sample so between the new stuff, the stuff I had at home, and the sample we should have more than enough to treat us all for the required 7 days. The boys and DH can go back to work/school tomorrow and we even have a dr's note for that.

We filled the prescription for the eye drops but the two pharmacies we went too, neither had the ointment and would have to order it. It could take as long as 5 days for it to come in and by then, D would be better so we skipped that. The eye drops were very reasonable and once again they took a percentage off the office visit since we have no insurance, so it was manageable.

It's frustrating. All winter long we've dodged getting seriously sick and to be taken down, right before spring break, by pink eye. At the moment we are all red eyed, squinty, and headachy but not to bad. Now I know why the kids really fought the eye drops because they HURT for the first few days.