Four years ago, I celebrated my daughter’s first Christmas by lying on the floor beside the toilet in my in-laws’ guest bathroom in London, trying to keep my retching quiet as to not dampen the holiday spirit swirling around the tree downstairs as annual gift-giving procedures commenced.
An enchanting scene to be had, weakly caressing ye old porcelain throne – but not an uncommon one around this time of year. With the weather turning colder and more people congregating together ahead of the big day on Dec. 25, Christmas-time illnesses are covertly dancing their way from person to person to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Sickness” or “Jingle Bell Pox.” It doesn’t happen every holiday season, but I’d put the running odds at around 50/50 for staying healthy.
That Christmas in 2019 was particularly bad (that bug was notably worse than the strain of COVID I would get the following year), but it had nothing on what my household was contending with the week leading up to Christmas earlier this month. That ungodly influenza laid my family and I low for the better part of a week.
Wednesday is typically the editorial staff’s ‘reset’ day; after the remainder of the four newspapers in our division are sent to press on the Tuesday, we essentially clear the slate and start all over again in terms of gathering and producing content. I recall feeling pretty good that Wednesday two weeks ago, I had got a couple big features off my plate the previous couple issues and I was beginning to sense that Christmas holidays were near. With just some sports and random photo assignments for the most part, my workload was a bit lighter than it had been in a while and so was my step.
I knocked off all my assignments that day in short order. Easy peasy. During an afternoon high school hockey game in Wingham, I had a single prolonged random coughing fit that left me feeling a bit uneasy, but I was still feeling pretty good. By the time I returned home from a photo assignment later that evening, those good feelings had evapourated. Within 12 hours, my illness had gone nuclear.
For the next five days, I would alternate instances of shivering under a blanket to stints of feeling close to normal. But zero appetite throughout, usually mixed in with extreme weakness and a raging headache. By day three, a painful cough coupled with nasty phlegm dressed in a festive green had made its way into the equation, and there wasn’t a single night that I didn’t wake up around 3 a.m. completely drenched in sweat. By the time I actually came through the thing the following week, it’s easy to say I lost close to 10 pounds. Not hard when you’re eating a half a piece of toast a day.
My wife and kids succumbed to the bug from hell one by one, some faring better than others in terms of longevity. And anyone with small children know that the only thing that makes an illness (or hangover) that much worse is having to care for tykes who can’t grasp the concept that you’re literally too ill to move, and still have the running list of demands for you regardless. Fuses run short during those times; it’s somewhat easy to reflect upon those trying situations after the fact with a grain of salt but when you’re actually living them, it’s freakin’ awful.
I write this a full week after the incident all started, and it almost seems surreal that it happened at all now that we’re regaining our strength. The only evidence that remains is the general lived-in destruction of our home, which we were basically unable to leave for several days other than for a shivering, nausea-riddled supply run or two behind a mask.
I suppose I should be grateful that we got our sickness ‘out of the way’ before Christmas itself landed. That is unless we manage to get something else in that precarious window in between. By the time you read this it will have been a few days after the big day, so here’s hoping you avoided the Great Plague of ‘23 and have a wonderful holiday season.
Thanks for reading, Merry Christmas, and I’ll see you back here in 2024.
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This is a bi-weekly opinion column; for question or comment contact Dan McNee at dmcnee@midwesternnewspapers.com.
