My Sick Kids

Your terminology probably says a lot about you. Calling it "the youtube" puts you over the age of 50. Tissue versus kleenex it shows your proclivity towards brand recognition. If call it pop rather than soda you are more likely to live on the west coast. If you call everything Coke you live in Atlanta. If refer to coffee as leaded or unleaded rather than regular or decaf you are my grandpa.

If you call a place that houses sick people an infirmary you sound like you are are in rural 19th Century Europe. If you call it a sick bay you are on board a spaceship. A sanatorium makes you sound like you're from New England in the 1900's. When it's name is the sick ward it's because you live in a mental institution or a place that has "non-sick" wards.

Whatever it you you call it by, we are now it. February and March are colloquially known as the months of sickness. There is stagnant water all over the city and with it more disease and mosquitoes. This is the time of year where there are riots over cholera scares. and if I can make it to April without getting sick again it be only because Jesus has got his eye on me. I don't know why Jesus wouldn't have two eyes on me. I suppose Jesus could have been a cyclops (the Bible is technically silent on the subject).

For the month of February we had approximately:

• 12 cases of malaria. This prompted to finally buy new bug nets as the old ones were getting a little beat up.
• 4 cases of the flu. Fever, vomit, headaches, the whole nine yards. It did not start with me, nor did it end with me, but I was firmly in the middle.
• 5 cases of the 24-hour bug. Consisted of stomach aches, dizziness, sweating, general anemia, and lack of appetite.
• 2 flare-ups of asthma.
• 2 cases of the heebie-jeebies as somebody was walking around at night under their old mosquito net and Jose and Eduil mistook it for a ghost and were screaming in terror and refused to go back to the sleep without the light on.

We're a little beat up, and me taking kids to the hospital in the middle of the night disrupts my beauty sleep, so if you could be praying for the health and sanity of all of us here it would be timely and appreciated. Thanks from all of us to all of you. God Bless.