And no one -- not a single person! -- had noticed or even suspected.
For all my "OH MY GOD! THEY MUST KNOW AT WORK!" panic ... and no one knew. I know that we're all a little myopic about our lives (read: self centred), but I think that my navel gazing has taken it to a whole new level.
* * * * * * *
I arrived at daycare this morning at the regular time to find that five (5) kids were out with the vomiting nasty that The Boy had on Tuesday (at least I hope it was the same one, otherwise I'm going to have FUN this weekend.) Before I'd even finished drop off they'd reached the critical number of six when they are required to call the health authorities. Now, none of those kids is allowed back to daycare until Monday, regardless of how mild their illnesses might have been. It's considered an "ILLNESS OUTBREAK!!!"
It's nice to know that my kid is really good at something -- spreading illness! Way to go kid! Way to strike out first and then infect the rest of your friends!!
To be honest I feel terribly bad. I have a job that's relatively easy to take sick days from, and usually if there's any threat of me or my kid passing on illness, I stay home. I consider it my part in cutting down proliferation of illness. Not everyone has a job that can do that -- I remember my ex's dad working through three weeks of a terrible flu because he was a doctor in a single practice and if he didn't work, his patients wouldn't have any doctor at all.
(Don't get me started on the the problems involved in a single doctor practice, which I don't think is a great model, nor the practice of working through the flu, with SICK PEOPLE, which probably just resulted in a.) him taking a LONG time to get better and b.) spreading it to a lot of people, many of whom may have had other underlying problems. But hey.)
As I was saying -- I try to stay home if I can, with any illness. I can work from home if I'm not feeling too bad, and I almost always get better faster if I stay home early on in an illness. And I almost did stay home with the kid on Wednesday, but he seemed FINE. And now seven kids are sick with the same thing (or worse) ... to be fair, I'm pretty sure he caught it at a playdate on Sunday, which would mean a 48 hour incubation period before symptoms, which would mean anyone who caught it Thursday caught it from my kid on Tuesday, long before I even knew he was sick ... Not to mention the mom who dropped off right after me said that HER kids had the damn thing over the weekend.
Still. I do feel a little like Typhoid Mary.
* * * * * * * * *
edited to add: it took me like an hour to realize that above in the first paragraph I had written "through" for "threw" -- what's more is that I kept looking at it thinking "that doesn't look right ... " but I had NO IDEA why. Clearly the hilarity of my life had addled my brain.
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