A Weekend in Bed, an hour in ‘jail’

A Weekend in Bed, an hour in ‘jail’

By Allan Olson

A crazy whirlwind week flew by in a hurry with four separate trips to the doctor’s office for treating the latest “pandemic” to hit the house and this time I was even bit.

This week I was even more grateful that my wife and I often have what I refer to as “departments” and 90% percent of the time one of her “departments” is handling doctor appointments. This week I had the privilege of making three of the four unplanned doctor visits as I had to take both Marcus and Abigail to the doctor last week and then myself – not fun.

Food Shelf Jail.....

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a poor patient, I don’t get sick often, at least not enough to keep me down and out and then once I get meds, I had better be on the mend – fast, because I have plans and being under the weather ruins my plans. Looking back on the week I saw the signs that I was probably coming down with the same thing the kids had – strep, but I pushed the signs aside thinking that I was overreacting – and since my throat wasn’t hurting at all – well at least not really, any test they would do would turn out negative anyway. So with that, I continued my duties going to games, but didn’t really take any time to enjoy the nicer weather that was continuing – I was planning to do all that on Saturday.

Saturday morning came along and I woke up with the sneaky suspicion that I was going to be the next victim of strep in the house. I informed my wife of my decision to head to the clinic and then the fishing tournament and after the fishing tournament I would be home and ready to play catch with Nikolai just as I had promised him I would all week.

I headed into the clinic and got checked out – they confirmed it was indeed strep – “lucky me” I went to get my meds, ignored the suggestion from my wife to just come home – since I had a job to do, I was going to do it. So I made the rounds of the fishing tournament, visiting with a few people, trying not to get to close to anyone as I had no desire to share the love and eventually a few hours later I made it home – completely exhausted.

It was 50 degrees out – perhaps the nicest day in February ever in my lifetime and I crawled into bed. Even worse – I crawled into bed, knowing that my commitment to toss the ball around with my kids – was not going to happen and there was nothing I could do about it. I had hopes that after a short nap I would feel rejuvenated and ready to make best of what was left of the day – but it didn’t happen.

I spent the rest of the day in my bed, sometimes sleeping, sometimes reading or watching television. I don’t remember if I had anything to eat that evening, perhaps some toast, I drained the hot water heater in the shower, only to get out and be instantly freezing having to crawl back into bed with a sweatshirt and Abigail grabbing a couple more blankets for me to help warm me up and giving me extra ice in my water glass – “because I needed to cool down,” she said.

Much later that evening, I was feeling better, but it was only a false sense of security as my fever spiked back up and I went from warm to cold and back again during the night. The next morning I felt well enough to make some eggs for myself for breakfast, but shortly after I crawled back into bed. I took a morning nap and then laid in bed throughout the afternoon while my wife and kids worked on some cleaning projects in the house – which I felt bad about not helping, but secretly happy about getting out of it – which made no sense at all. I got up again for a lunch of chicken noodle soup – easy on the throat and crawled back into bed again.

I briefly considered going into town with my wife – just get out of bed - on the promise that I wasn’t going to drive or go into the stores but in the end I decided that the bed was the better place for me.

That evening I felt well enough to do some things and not be just in the bedroom and then I fell asleep early. Well apparently, all the sleeping I had done caught up with me as I slept only about two hours – but it felt like I slept for 10 and so I was awake trying to get back to sleep from about 11 p.m. to sometime after 3 a.m.- it was a long night. At one point, I even contemplated getting up and working on stories but most of my notes were in the vehicle and I didn’t feel that ambitious.

Aside from that, it was nice weekend – especially Saturday and I couldn’t even go geocaching. Hopefully I will find more in March as my February stats are pretty weak.

On Thursday, Feb. 25, I was recruited to spent some time in jail, thankfully it was only an hour and no it wasn’t a real jail. I was asked to take a few pics and perhaps raise some money for the Cass Lake Area Food Shelf by asking for ‘bail money.’

So just a note of thanks to all my sponsors, John Persell, Clem’s Hardware, Larry Refsland, Rochelle Johnson, Bryan Hackbarth, CL-B elementary, Steve Ballou, Bill Batchelder, Kara Randall, Bob Smith, Cease Funeral Home and any others I might have missed – your donations were appreciated to get me out of jail and helping the food shelf.

Please remember to watch out for the buses that are carrying our most precious cargo. Also snap a photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit.