the X Files?

A little reflection about the past year made me start to wonder...

It started with the bedbugs.  I'm not sure I even wrote about that, but last summer Marianna had a full-fledged war with these fabled critters.  Over and over again she would wake up with bites all over her body, and after we finally were able to conclude that she wasn't getting the bites outside, I started doing research on bedbugs. Let me summarize with this: they are nasty little creatures. We had to go to the mattresses, as they say, quite literally since it seemed her mattress was indeed the part of the problem.  A new mattress, a steamed bed frame, bug sprayed crevices, and the complete sterilization of everything in her room finally gave us the victory.  Before that I kind of thought bed bugs were imaginary...real life experience taught me otherwise.

Then there came the termites.  I knew these weren't imaginary, but knowing they exist and having thousands pour in your house through your dining room wall are two very, very different things.  That war, thank goodness, didn't take as much ammunition as the war on the bed bugs.  One call to the termite man, and my part was through.  And hopefully our termite contract will keep me through with termites for good.

Next was a trip to the emergency room because of Adrienne's febrile seizure.  This incident fell into the I didn't even know there was such a thing category.  The fact that I could go into my baby's room, find her limp and barely breathing with her eyes rolled back in her head, and walk back into my house 5 hours later with a completely healthy baby with no lasting side effects blows my mind.  Now I know.  Febrile seizures are common, not life-threatening, and do not indicate epilepsy.  Very, very scary, but also very, very best case scenario.

We wrap up the year of weirdness with my recent bout of scarlet fever.  This creates a fourth and final category  that I'll call, I thought that illness went extinct in the 1800's. I'm still a little weirded out by the fact that a disease that was so deadly a hundred years ago can be wiped out by antibiotics almost over night. If I had been alive at a different time, I might be dead by now, two weeks after first contracting it.  As it was, I felt awful for one day, so-so for the next, and 100% by the third.  But still, scarlet fever?  That's just weird.

So there it is.  X files material? We're probably not worthy of investigation, but you've got to admit, we've had a year of weirdness.  Fortunately I don't think any of it's catching because friends and family seem to be living in perfectly appropriate states of normalness.  So don't be afraid to be our friends.  Instead, enjoy learning via proxy about some of the stranger occurrences that are out there =)