Pretty hectic. Been working to bring Ariel’s fever down and keep it there, plus she’s had a cough that seems to laugh at cough medicines, even prescription ones. Today, though, her energy level is up and she’s not coughing near as much (although her fever jumped back up to 101). Plus I feel the dámņëd virus rooting around in the base of my throat, trying to get a toe-hold. So I’m scarfing Vitamin C, orange juice and other fluids as fast and frequently as I can, hoping to stave it off because I just *so* don’t have time to be sick.
On the plus side, finished several projects including “Fallen Angel #11,” the conclusion to the five part storyline entitled “Down to Earth.” Personally, I was rather pleased with it, which is saying something since I’m my own worst critic. And Dave and Fernando’s pencils and inks are just getting better and better, as you’ll see starting with next issue. They’re definitely in the groove now.
PAD
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Can’t wait to read this storyline. “Fallen Angel” is the best read out there.
Be well Peter. I know what a drag it is to be down with flu during the holiday season. My condolences to Ariel on that score.
I don’t know how you do it, PAD.
I mean, I am tearing my hair out just trying to keep up on my son’s condition (fortunately, my wife is home, so that takes some of the stress out of dealing with my daughter, and cuts the number of hospitals I need to visit down to one. They are backing him off on the ventilator pressure, if anyone is interested), and I don’t have any sort of job-related deadlines to keep.
How do you not lose your mind? Or, if lost, how do you keep from taking an AK to a McDonald’s?
My medicine cabinet is full of a dozen varieties of OTC and prescription childrens’ cough medicines. They are all useless when my guys get that relentless middle of the night cough that wakes everyone in the house. Somebody finally told me that they could have post-nasal drip. I started making them go sleep out in the Lazy-boy when they can’t stop coughing; having them sleep sitting up seems to do the trick. I don’t know if that little tidbit is of any use to you and Ariel, but there you go.
My son John, who just turned 3 today, is burning up the recliner right now with 103.4. I have every faith that the little virus bûggërš are incubating unimpeded in the rest of the family right now, and should be ripe by Christmas morning. Have a lovely holiday everyone! 🙂
Caroline has picked up a cold but seems (so far) to be fever free. She is spending a lot of time in my lap today. Peter and I are hoping that she will be well before having to fly home.
K
Caroline has picked up a cold but seems (so far) to be fever free. She is spending a lot of time in my lap today. Peter and I are hoping that she will be well before having to fly home.
Wolfknight- I am glad to hear that your son is doing better. How’s his prognosis at this point?
K
Best thing to do when you feel a cold or flu coming on is to start taking Zinc. The OTC stuff, at least 20mg a day, though I go for the 40 or 50mg. Just take it with breakfast. It *really* works, and I’m now taking Zinc daily.
Even better than Zinc is a derivative product called ZICAM. It’s OTC and you want to buy the gel NOT THE PILL.
Even better are the gel swabs, so you don’t have to share the gel pump. It sounds weird, but if you take it AS SOON AS you feel symptoms or think you’ve been infected, it will knock out the virus in 2 days. it works right in your nostrils.
I love this stuff and have gotten several people to swear by it. So don’t swear, BUY IT!
Prayers and happiness this Hanukkah/holiday season.
Daniel
When does someone have time to be sick? An odd phrase, that.
Hope you are all feeling much better very soon. I hope your holidays can still be happy ones.
The only thing I’ve ever found to control my cough is Fisherman’s Friend’s cough drops. They taste terrible but I don’t cough after I’ve had one.
I gave one to a friend with a cold and he described it as taking a Halls cough drop, grinding it to powder, then proceeding to snort it.
i do the old world remedy that my grandfather taught me. i down a couple of shots of mr.daniels and that clears everything right up. it should be noted i come from a long line of alcoholics, but hey, we rarely get sick. go figure.
I hope Ariel gets well again soon and I hope you, PAD, will be able to keep the shields up :).
I want to use this opportunity to wish you and your family a merry Christmas and a happy, successful new year. Have fun!
Sorry, I was a bit hasty. If you don`t celebrate Christmas, I wish you all a good time anyway.
My WHOLE family is sick with the flue…. except me. Why? My theory: Well, this year my dad didn’t get a Douglas Fur. He got a DIFFERENT tree, and everytime I touch it or any of it’s millions of loose needles, I develop this weird rash. Histomin tricks the immune system into being more hyper than Bart Allen after 12 glasses of cherry cola. With the immune system on constat Orange Alert nothing has a chace to get in.
I got the exact same nasty flu, (horrible cough and fever) which totally sucks! I had to cancel plans with my family tonight so I don’t get the kiddies sick too!
Well I hope you can keep yourself helathy at least, and that you Have a Great Holiday!
Happy Holidays (Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice) to all here.
Peter, I hope Ariel feels better soon.
Re: Dennis & Fisherman’s Friend….so you’re the one hiding the WMDs. Those things are the reason we say “that which does not kill us makes us stronger.” I think I’d rather croak.
This discussion got me thinking about the echinacea and goldenseal. I’m not a big fan of herbal remedies in general, but when I was teaching I began taking echinacea and goldenseal on the advice of a bunch of veteran teachers. All through high school and college, if I came down with a cold, it routinely turned into strep throat. My first year teaching, I got strep 3 times, and walking pneumonia once. When I began taking the herbs I found that I caught way fewer colds, and those that got me didn’t last long AND I stopped getting strep. It even helped clear up my skin. The herbalists claim that the herbs strengthen the immune system, but I’m betting there’s some antibiotic properties in there. The package says to take 3 pills a day; I never took more than one every other day when well and one a day when sick.
FYI, my son’s fever is gone today. He’s playing Tarzan King of the Livingroom Furniture now.
It’s that dam flu crap going around everyone in my house has the caugh thingy. Take care hope your daughter is feeling better PAD.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.
We need a good snow storm or frost to get rid of the germ crap in the air.
Everyone that I know has this cold.
Cheers
Peter,
Hope Ariel gets better soon. Just about everyone at work AND home here has this one too. I was fortunate enough to get the ‘weaker’ version of it, where the fever is not so bad, and the sore throat goes away after the first day or three.
A daily glass of Orange Juice and Mom’s Chicken Soup seemed to help alot.
Sabrina
Hope both you and Ariel and all the folks here and there kids are feeling better.
Just want to let all of you know, this particular flu strain is extremely virulent. The medicat center where I work (I’m an R>N.) has banned visits from children 12 and under through January at least, and the E.R. is full of parents with their kids. The son of one of my co-workers (also an R.N.) was in the hospital for two days with pnuemonia; his fever spiked to 105 and no matter what she did (alternating Tylenol and apsirin every two hours, giving him a tepid bath, cool washcloths in his armpits and groin, forcing fluids) it wouldn’t come down. Then he started wheezing and his color became pale, then cyanotic…so she rushed him to the ER and he was admitted…and it all started with the sore throat and cough that so many of you have noted. I normally do not adhere to giving antibiotics for viral infections, I’m against it 99% of the time, but in this case, if the cough doesn’t clear up or there is wheezing or phelgm is being brought up, or if the fever isn’t going down, I strongly advise calling your MD and discuss taking a prophylatic antibiotic.
Best to all this holiday season, despite this somewhat gloomy post.
Mindy
I hope the family’s doing well too. And I wish you all a good holiday.
Thanks for asking about my son, and I’m sorry to hear of your family’s varied illnesses.
I hope everyone feels better soon.
As for my son, his condition improves almost every day. He’s off the ventilator, and is more or less breathing on his own. He’s taking in more and more food, and is nothing if not strong as a horse. His prognosis is excellent.
It may be a while (a few weeks yet), but he WILL be coming home, hale whole and hearty.
Sorry about the delayed response, but I’ve been doing so many hospital runs, and family Christmas visits, that I hardly know which way is up anymore.
Merry Christmas (or other winter holiday of your choice) to all, and to all a Happy New Year.
Hi Peter,
I just wanted to share some paragraphs from an autobiography called, A Cure For Gravity. It was written by musician/song writer, Joe Jackson and published by PublicAffairs. In it reveals that even he had an interest in reading, collecting, and drawing comics, during his youth.
“My favorite books were about astronomy and space exploration, and my hero was Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, in the Eagle weekly….I don’t know what I would have done without Dan Dare. He was one thing to look forward to each week. Without that, my stoicism might have given out. I might have been forced to admit that I was, in fact, having a pretty miserable childhood.” (p. 14)
“In my spare time, almost as a kind of revenge, I started writing stories and illustrating them. I seemed to have a talent for drawing. Pretty soon I’d created my own space hero, Xavier Megan (I picked the names from a “Name Your Baby” book of my mother’s). It was a shameless rip-off of Dan Dare. One day I told my father about my creation. He glared at me through narrowed eyes and said, deliberately, “You stupid child”. ” (p.18)
“After a while I graduated from Dan Dare to Marvel comics – Spiderman and the Fantastic Four. Trading comics with other kids got me accepted up to a point.” (p. 29)
“One day I stumbled across a dingy sweet-shop in Southsea where there were three or four piles of secondhand comics in a corner, going for a couple of pennies each. As I looked through them my heart raced. They were priceless back issues of Marvel comics, in perfect condition, dozens and dozens of them. Someone’s collection had come down from the attic, and they hadn’t a clue what treasures they were throwing away. I bought as many as I could afford and came back over the next three days with as much money as I could scrape together. I built the backbone of a collection, which I still have and which is now worth thousands of pounds. I bought double copies, and valuable issues of titles I didn’t collect, to use in trades. The other collectors at school were awestruck. I had a secret connection. Why me? It was a though, once in a while, a crumb fell from God’s table. I was the insect who found the crumb, and it kept me going for weeks.” (p.35, 36)
Even the most unlikely of people were influenced or effected by comics.
Check out some cool websites you might or might not be aware of when you get the chance:
http://www.joejackson.com
http://www.whitestripes.com
http://www.trusttheprocess.com
-Richard Perez
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