Goodbye February! Part One

Well this month gave us a nice kick in the pants on its way out.

Last week Ryan came home from work Thursday afternoon and was not feeling well. By that evening he was quickly going down the full fledged flu path. The kids went to school Friday-first day back in a week.  Sunday night Matthew was down and out. One of the worst parts for him when he gets sick is that he has night terrors. He is not awake but he is walking around talking and acting like he is awake and he is usually literally terrified out of his mind and thinks his life is in immediate danger. It sucks. He will be screaming and begging us to help him, but there isn’t much we can really do until he wakes up. I am scared to death he is going to give himself a heart attack. We have several ways to try and wake him up but it can take a good 5-10 minutes sometimes. So he had a few of those Sunday night. I was up with him because Ryan wasn’t doing any better and then I went to work and he and Ryan stayed home sick together. Monday evening Emilee joined the unfortunate sickies. Matthew had more night terrors but upped his game. He woke me and Emilee around 1 in the morning. I  told him we were going to go downstairs and get a drink I started to follow him down the stairs and stopped just long enough to tell Emilee everything was fine and go back to sleep. Matthew went downstairs, unlocked the front door and walked right on out! I heard the door open and took off to get him. He was at the bottom of the driveway by the time I got out the front door. I was really thinking I was going to have to chase him down and tackle him to get him home. Luckily when I called him  he stopped and I was able to coax him back. Holy crap! So the positive side to these night terrors is that when he finally does snap out of it and wake up he doesn’t remember it. Like I said most of the time he is terrified for his life at the very least his safety, so it is nice that he doesn’t remember those feelings or stress when he wakes up. But, now I am worried that he is going to get out of the house sometime and I don’t hear him and walk to some location before he wakes up and have no idea where he is, no frame of reference on how he got there. Sheesh! I did not sleep very well the rest of the night. I kept jumping out of bed at every little noise and Matthew had another night terror around four. At that point he didn’t think he could go back to sleep so I boxed him in ‘my house’ with a blanket on the couch so he would wake me up if he moved and we watched a show/dozed together until I had to go to work. I called Ryan over lunch and he said Alli was now home sick. I was supposed to work Wednesday and Thursday but I asked them to find a sub for me (who was the sub for them already) and I stayed home the rest of the week. Emilee bounced back and was back to school Wednesday. Ryan said on Tuesday that he ‘just felt sick, not like death’ so he went to work Wednesday and Alli and Matthew made it back Friday. Knock on wood I have had a sore throat and felt run down but hopefully that is the extent of if for me. This Winter has been a rough one for our family. We occasionally have one or two of us get sick but we have all had some bug or another multiple times this Winter. Yuck!