Scrubbing the Ceiling

Day 2 of monitoring Tate’s flu and fever at home is going well. It’s not great, but nothing new and alarming has happened, and in our chronically stressed out world that counts as a win.

Tate actually woke up feeling worse this morning, but by the afternoon he was doing calculus homework to prepare for school tomorrow. He has class with all three professors that aren’t going to give him a break with absences on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and he is convinced he needs to go so he doesn’t burn up all his allotted days in the first two weeks. We’ll handle tomorrow when tomorrow gets here, and it’s foolishly optimistic, but he might wake up feeling like a new man.

Scott spent the night at our house last night instead of his apartment. It was equal parts hang out with Tate time and laundry. Tate loves it when Scott visits; I could hear their voices coming from the back of the house followed by bursts of laughter and then Tate’s coughing. Talk, laugh, cough. Talk, laugh cough.

Tate and I had plans for this long weekend. Normal people doing normal things kind of plans. They were supposed to be fun and relaxing at the same time and spent with very special people. Instead, Tate is enduring a nasty flu and chasing me out of his room every time I enter, and I am literally watching white paint dry while trying not to bother him too much but as often as necessary. I can’t prove it, but I think Scott jumped off the edge of the bathtub in the master bathroom to see if he could touch the ceiling and left a dark hand print 10 feet up. If you know Scott, you can see how leaping through the air to touch the highest point in a room is would seem like a really good idea. After much ceiling scrubbing, priming, and painting, the hand print is gone and the ceiling is a crisp white. (Also a new crisp white are the sleeve of Greg’s robe, a towel, and the back of my arm. I’m a terrible, messy painter. I can see why I left that hand print on the ceiling for three years.)

The clinic was closed today for MLK Day, so Greg will call them tomorrow morning with an update on Tate’s condition and to ask if we need to do anything additional to help him or bring him in to be checked out. By giving him Tylenol every four hours to keep this temperature under control, we have no real way of measuring how he’s doing; checking for fevers was it and that has been muted. The other problem is that we can’t completely trust Tate to tell us he needs help; he does not like going to the hospital – at all – and will do pretty much anything to avoid it. Also, his ability to handle discomfort has become superhuman at this point, so by the time something registers as an emergency in his brain it has probably really bad for much longer than it should have.

It has been calm and mostly quiet, but Greg and I are on edge. We can’t help it. I’m burning my nervous energy doing chores that don’t really need to be done and can be abandoned at a moment’s notice (IE: scrubbing bathroom ceilings). Greg has become an Influenza A expert, reading everything he can find about the flu and possible complications to look out for. Greg’s coping strategies are probably more useful than mine, but every time I google symptoms or medications it’s so scary I crumble inward and cannot see a way forward.

Tate has needed some space today. Every time I went into his room he let me know he needed me to leave. He was never rude about it, but once I was done taking his temperature, giving him his meds, and asking a few questions to see how he was doing, it was clear he wanted to be alone. And poor Tate, we’ll have to check his temperature at least two more times before he goes to bed tonight.