Parents - you gotta love'em

The other week I was sick. A slight fever, soar throat, stuffy nose – the usual. Except with the swine flu thing going on – what with posters warning and informing everyone about it all over campus and on the news – my parents were particularly concerned. I didn’t think I had it, mainly because I had injected in myself a little vaccine called denial. So I came home from school Friday night of last week, a sick, pathetic (yes, I must admit it; I am a baby when I’m sick) and cold, but hot at the same time, Bern.

I know this is a kind of implicit thing in my family, or maybe that’s just in my point of view, but whenever someone gets sick, we tend to elongate that period of ill health because we don’t exactly stick to the medicine schedule. At least that’s the case with me. My reason? Because simply I forget to take the medicine or I don’t believe it works sometimes. Perhaps it was the denial I rashly injected again last week.

In any case, last week’s recovery from the common minor flu – or cold – seemed to break the cycle, thanks to my parents’ love and care and fear of the swine flu, and their determination not to bring me to the doctor’s so we wouldn’t have to pay. I had become their experiment. And the baby that crawls out of me during these times of sickness only helped. I was already drowning in sea foam tissues.

I stuck to an oatmeal diet. Not exclusively though; I also had arroz caldo, green tea with honey and hot chocolate milk – to name a few. I stayed in bed and did my homework there (which wasn’t very productive due to the seducing slumber that surrounded and made up the aura of my bed). I often fell asleep with books on my face. Outside of the house, I stopped going to the gym for the whole week – that’s a first.

But what really made my recovery fast and efficient was my parents' forcing me to stick to the medicine schedule. I was on the most comforting and delicious TheraFlu. No complaints there. But see, without my parents I probably would have been too lazy to prepare it or I would have forgotten to drink it every once in a – what’s the dosage and directions for adults ages 12 and over? I had a separate medicine mug for it, propped upside down on a saucer next to a spoon, when it and I were taking a break from its use. My parents were on me with my medicine. They kindly prepared it for me (again, I can be such a baby when I’m sick) when it was time to take it – and saw to it that I did, I might add: If that cup wasn’t empty in ten minutes, rinsed out and propped upside down on the saucer, they would inquire both vehemently and panickingly. They kept asking me if I had a headache or any other body aches and texted me to take my aspirin when I was in school. My mom had put a roll of tissue paper on the dresser next to my bed for the sudden sneezes of the wee hours. At least twice a day, they took my temperature to see my progression. And sometimes, quite randomly, my dad would all of a sudden slap the back of his hand on my face (I don’t think he realized he was still wearing his wedding ring), aiming for my forehead to see if I had a fever. He had turned to my mom once, and then I heard a murmured exchange of words, the result of which was them asking me, as if out of suspicion, if I had taken my medicine. I forgot that time. Oh, that’s what parents are for!

To make a long story short, my recovery time was relatively short compared to the many times I’ve been sick in the past. I would like to thank my parents for their determination to make sure that I got better as fast as possible so as to end the misery the sickness engendered, which was probably from someone who sneezed on me in my world literature class or any of my other English classes. I would like to thank them for driving straight from work to CVS to buy the TheraFlu and I would like to thank them for warming it up in the microwave and cutting the TheraFlu packet filled with its miracle powder to be mixed into the hot water. I would like to thank my mom for putting the aspirin in a zip-bloc bag so I can bring it to school, even when I could have done it, though I was lazy. Thanks, I really do appreciate it.