Vacation Time: I think I'm gonna be sick

There has to be a phenomenon known as "Get Sick While You're on Vacation." I looked it up and found nothing. But I know it's there.

The long-awaited winter break is here. While every day is (sometimes) a vacation day for me as a stay-at-home-mom, I was excited about having my husband back for a week without anything major going on and just puttering around. He is a teacher, and his job requires he spend a lot of time on campus and with his students normally, so that break was just going to be 'fun time.'

As if.

Before break even started, my poor son meandered downstairs to the breakfast table with pink eye. I looked at him from a distance and saw the faint swelling of an eyelid and just knew. Dread and sorrow well up as we decide to call him off for school, which means he'll miss the Valentine exchange. I run his newly-decorated shoebox for Valentine collection into school anyway.

My daughter has a library story hour on Fridays, and since my son was basically "well," we decided to go. I figured I could easily isolate him from other children, (especially since this branch almost never has more than a handful of people in it anyway) which was successful. But minutes before we were about to leave, after a trip to the bathroom for hand washing, my son inexplicably passes out. What the heck? I think. Fast forward a few hours and we've been seen by paramedics and the pediatrician. And by now, Wednesday morning, we've seen them as well as the neurologist and had blood work done this morning (during which, I must say, my son was quite the brave little trouper). Tomorrow we have a cardiology work-up, and next week, the Big Shebang: An EEG, ordered by the neurologist, in which I have to somehow deprive my son of sleep AND keep him awake until we get to the appointment.

My mind races. How am I going to do that? I'll need someone to watch the other two and then someone else to sit next to my son and poke him the entire time in the car while we're en route to the lab, which is about 45 minutes away, easily. There's only so much noise I can make to keep him awake,  and the radio and air conditioning can only be turned up so high.

Can this get any worse? At least if it was going to happen, this is the best time, I suppose.

I thought back to vacations past, and definitely remember some doozies. Lounging, if you want to call it that, on the deck of our hotel room at Jekyll Island, Georgia, the sounds of the surf punctuated only by severe congestion and nose-blowing. My mom, on a trip to Florida one year, gave me the same report during a phone call to see how her "vacation" was going. I've had countless bouts of nasty cold, stomach flu and other junk while my husband's been off, thank goodness, so he can take care of the kids. But it doesn't make for a very exciting time.

And in 2011, we plan on taking a mongo family vacation. I'm starting to get nervous already in anticipation of which one of us will be puking our guts out on the eve of our trip. Why is it we always seem to get sick while on vacation? It's like our bodies know there will be a period of rest, and finally break down. If anyone can answer this question, please let me know!

In the meantime, I think I need a vacation from my vacation.