BLEECH!!! I just spent the last four days, including two beautiful weekend days, in bed…..with a terrible cold. I don’t think it’s the flu, I didn’t ever have a temperature. What I had was a hacking cough, a relentless one at that, and intense fatigue. No, I didn’t go to the doctor, because I am just hard headed like that. I usually wait until I can’t stand it anymore or until I develop some unusual symptom that I can’t attribute to the usual suspects. I have had been too many times at the doctor’s office just to be told I have a bad cold or the flu. Heck, I could have told them that! So how about you, do you run to the doctor everytime you get sick?

When you get sick, do you go in to work anyway or do you use up all your sick time taking days off at the slightest sign of a cold?

Me, I usually try to save my sick time for the girls. We use our sick time (separate from vacation time and Personal Time Off) to take care of a sick child, for doctor’s appointments, or when you are actually too sick to come in to work. Normally, with just a regular cough and sniffling type of cold I probably would have gone to work anyway and tried to work through it while trying to stay out of co-workers’ way so I don’t spread germs. Staying out of people’s way is not difficult in my job anyway; my work requires me to be pretty independent and I coordinate team projects usually by phone or email. Face to face meetings are usually intentioned and planned so very much avoidable when necessary. I have a box of kleenex nearby, and a large container of disinfecting wipe to clean everything off at the end of the day just so I don’t save any germs for the next day.

This time around though, when the mere act of brushing my teeth fatigued me, I had to use a couple of days of sick time and just stayed in bed for the last four days. I’m sick and tired of being sick!

There is a new vaccine called Gardasil that can prevent the human papillomavirus (HPV), which has been identified to cause cervical cancer. This is wonderful news. However, the talk about making it mandatory for school aged girls to take the vaccine concerns me.

I have three daughters, and I wouldn’t want to see any of them get cancer. What mother would? However, I don’t know that I would give them the vaccine. Never mind the moral implications or the cost, they really don’t matter much to me. What matters is that I don’t believe this vaccine has been proven enough yet.

I think this rush to push it on the public is another ploy by lobbyists to make their companies money. I think if this drug proves itself over time, that parents will willingly sign up to have their children vaccinated rather than being mandated to do so (we do it for all the other vaccines, don’t we?). Side effects from this vaccine though are yet undetermined. There have been adverse side-effects from vaccines previously, this one is no different and no one wants their daughters to be guinea pigs for this drug. Thanks, but no thanks.

I was rather relieved to hear that Merck, the manufacturer, has decided to back off on lobbying for making the vaccine mandatory. For now anyway.

What would you do? Would you have your daughter/s vaccinated?

About two or three times a year, I suffer from killer migraines. Wouldn’t you know it, this last weekend one of them whacked me head on and I was reduced to a virtual sensory deprivation mode. I put myself on time out by laying in my darkened room and tried to shut out the noise from three kids and husband. They were great though, and very considerate. They let me nap all I wanted; especially since sleeping was the only way of escaping the horrendous headache. As soon as I woke up, the pain was back with a vengeance and I am off to take another dose of medicine. As much as I hate taking pills, this is one of those times when I do it with gusto.

I can never tell what brings on these bouts of migraines. I do get “regular” headaches as part of my PMS routine, but they are usually manageable and easily cured with a couple of Motrins or Advil. Last Saturday, Jade and I missed out on our usual weekend-sleep-in since she had to take the Explore test in Raleigh and we had to get up at six a.m. to get there in time. I was praying that the predicted ice/snow event predicted for early Saturday morning would get delayed, and my prayer was granted. Although it was very cold, is stayed quite dry until that afternoon.

The Explore test is a component of ACT which is an academic achievement test for college bound students, similar to the SAT. The Explore test is geared for 8th and 9th graders, but since Jade has been identified as gifted (yeah, I’m bragging here :)) she and a number of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders were invited to challenge the test. She says she did OK, but I’m sure she did more than OK. The test lasted three hours, and covered math, reading, science, and English. I could only burn an hour shopping at Wal-Mart while I waited, so I ended up waiting in the car while she took the test. I had a book to read, so it wasn’t so bad, but it was cold! I wonder now if that had anything to do with bringing on my migraine as it started as soon as we got home.