Every parent has experienced the challenging ordeal of being sick while caring for children. A simple cold can escalate into a relentless battle against your dwindling patience. As fate would have it, your illness usually coincides with your child’s newfound independence—like the day they decide to prepare their own lunch using a knife.
As you find yourself anchored to the couch, contemplating how much dignity you can sacrifice to reach the tissue box, brace yourself for these 30 inevitable occurrences when a parent gets sick:
- You’ll avoid showering for at least three days.
- At least once, you’ll resort to using your shirt as a tissue.
- Your children will become inexplicably louder.
- Think blow-out-your-eardrums loud.
- You’ll exhaust your supply of DayQuil and consider the NyQuil as a backup.
- Your kids will demand to binge-watch cartoons.
- Surprisingly, you might feel the same way.
- After three hours, you’ll find yourself questioning The Man In The Yellow Hat.
- You’ll have no appetite, but your kids will be ravenous.
- You’ll conclude that everyone can subsist on bread and peanut butter.
- Oh wait, you’re out of peanut butter, so cooking is unavoidable.
- Great.
- Your throat will start to hurt, making it tough to talk or yell.
- At that moment, one child will convince the other to explore the toilet.
- You’ll spend 20 minutes sanitizing the bathroom.
- You’ll forget you were in the middle of preparing lunch.
- The pasta will have turned into a mushy mess—time to start anew.
- Your partner will call to say he’s running late.
- You might just Google “can I get arrested for adding laxatives to my husband’s meal?”
- You’ll run out of tissues. And juice.
- After cramming the kids into the car, you’ll head to the store for supplies.
- $87 later, you’ll drag your kids and bags back inside.
- You’ll realize you wore the shirt you used to wipe your nose.
- You’ll call your mom and leave a desperate voicemail asking for help.
- Then it will hit you—no one has eaten lunch.
- However, it’s close to dinner time, so ordering pizza sounds like a plan.
- You’ll turn PBS back on and get the kids excited about a pillow fort.
- Finally, you’ll curl up on the couch with popsicles, having completely given up.
- Pizza will arrive!
- Two hours later, the house will look like a disaster zone, the kids will be asleep on the floor, and you’ll devour the last slice of cold pizza just as your partner walks through the door.
After tidying up the chaos, you’ll slip into your comfiest yoga pants, crawl into bed, and fall asleep dreaming of a peaceful getaway filled with copious amounts of cold and flu syrup.
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Summary: Navigating parenting while ill is a daunting challenge filled with absurd moments. From neglecting personal hygiene to managing unruly children, it’s a chaotic experience that tests a parent’s limits but is often filled with humor and relatability.