Still not completely back...

And do you know why? Cause right in the grand midst of holiday hectic frenziness, the entire family got sick. Like dominoes, one after the other. First the 8 year old, then the 6 year old followed closely by the 3 year old who just turned 4 and then the big baby got sick and that just about killed me. Why is it that when men get sick they revert to the infant stage? My husband pretty much curled up into a fetal position and remained in bed for four days. I AM NOT KIDDING. I get sick and it doesn't matter how sick I get, I could never lie in bed for four days. There is just too much to do and too many things to take care of. Plus my parents were in town and honestly, I don't have the type of parents that come in and help out. Oh no. I have the type of parents that come in and need to be catered to. And because I hate shopping so much, I still had Christmas shopping to do up until Christmas eve, as well as cooking and cleaning and laundry and wrapping and entertaining. All with at least a minimum of 2 or 3 rotating sick people in the house.

So I ask you, why is it that men are such wimps when they get sick? This is an age old question for women. To the ABC News article titled "Are Men Wimps About Getting Colds?" I would answer with a resounding DUH! According to a study by Benenden Healthcare, "Male workers are more likely to call in sick with "the flu," while women tend to go to work and carry about their business when they feel an illness coming on." Is this really news for anyone out there? In fact, there is even a phenomenon called "Man Flu." It even has it's own Wikipedia page . So what is Man Flu? Apparently it is a phenomenon by which men and women suffer the same illness but by which men piss and moan and take 3 times longer to recover than the average woman. I'm sure all my women readers are nodding their heads in sage understanding. Apparently a man will take 3 days to recover where a woman would take a day or a day and a half at most. So why is this? Do women get sick less? Actually, no, in fact, women are more likely to get sick more often because they have more contact with children. Are they stronger? Hard to answer because we would have to consider physical, emotional, pschyological, etc., and how do you analyze all that? Perhaps it is a matter of pain tolerance. After all, the old joke is that if human existence depended on men being pregnant and delivering our babies, then mankind would go extinct faster than you could say "Ice Age."

When I was pregnant for the second and third time, I had very bad pre-term labor. In order to keep from going into early labor, the doctor put me on a terbutaline pump that injected terbutaline into my system every four hours. The problem was I had to insert the needle which would provide the medicine into my system, into my leg and then change sites every few days. Well it was pretty hard to stab a large needle into my own leg. It was NOT like a thin insulin needle, this was bigger, it had the plastic tubing around the needle, and you had to stab it hard past the outer muscle in order to insert it properly. I asked my husband to do it. The first time he nearly passed out and left the needle partly in, partly out, with me screaming at him and him screaming at me that he couldn't do it. I finally slammed the needle in with my palm. But changing it was so bad that I would wait too long to change it and get an infection in my leg before being forced to change the injection site. I finally got my husband to get consistently good at it, but his hands would curl up into claws and he would wince and moan as if he were the one getting the needle. On top of all of this, I also had gestational diabetes and had to inject myself with insulin three times a day. This I did by myself with no hesitation. But if the roles were reversed, I doubt my husband would have been able to go through all that I went through.

In a recent article in Men's Health magazine on Why Men Are Babies the author discusses two types of men, the whimpering crybabies and the stoic silent types that never say a word until they are dead. There are good reasons for both. Men still feel that they are the stronger sex and that they shouldn't get sick and if they do get sick, well then, it must be a horrible illness that is thoroughly incapacitating and everyone around them should coddle and nurse them until they are better. But when weird things happen to their bodies, they are less likely than a woman to go to a doctor and check it out. They will more likely ignore it. This is why men don't catch testicular cancer or prostate cancer soon enough. Because even their doctors will admit that men are babies. (Now I say this because I do think more men need to be more concious about taking better care of themselves.)

OK - I just want to amend my post to also say that my hubby is only sick once a year and is only incapacitated with the flu. So he is that crazy mix of stoic suffering through all other ills and then turning into a baby when incapacitated by the flu. So I shouldn't really complain, it is just hard because usually he is not sick alone - I have a full house of sick people. He is a wonderful hubby and I am just so happy he is better.

So with that rant over, I shall leave you with one last funny ad which cracked me up in my sick bed. Thos Brits have a sick sense of humor.