H1N1 at the Library--Awesome.

You know that I don't take the twins anywhere with me anymore. It's flu season in general, so we stay home more, but H1N1 has been in high gear since the end of the summer, so I drastically reduced their activities to staying inside the house or backyard. And when I do drag them out with me, it's sanitize sanitize sanitize. We don't attend mass, I don't take them grocery shopping, we all sanitize our hands every time we enter the house, etc, etc.

Anyway, I heard through the grapevine recently that a child in our storytime group at the library came down with H1N1 a couple months ago. We stopped going to storytime over the summer for this exact reason. What are the chances that one of OUR storytime playmates would have H1N1? But it did happen, and bless his heart it seems that he recovered fully. But this is complete validation for me that I'm making the right decisions--the twins a-freaking-dore storytime at the library, but I just wouldn't risk taking them there with those germs floating around the last few months.

The Cough Assist costs several thousand dollars, and our insurance refused to pay for it. I completely blame our lack of Cough Assist for the twins' hospitalization last February, which is a big "eff you" to the insurance company, because it caused both babies to be hospitalized for two weeks--which cost a LOT more than a Cough Assist. (That hospital stay also cost my husband his job, for anyone who is keeping score.)

So we keep the twins at home now during flu season, or I beg my parents to sit for them while I run errands. We don't have much support here, beyond my father who is retired and happy to care for them, so with Chris' travel schedule we do the best we can.

Please, to everyone out there not affected by high risk adorable children at home depending on you, don't go to a grocery store, post office, or friend's home if you're ill. I know that there are folks out there who poo-poo'd all that craziness around H1N1, but please know that there are good people out there who do their best to keep their families healthy and who do not want to be stuck in a hospital and pray and worry that their child won't recover from a simple cold or flu. H1N1 is not simple, and with 1 in 6 Americans having had H1N1, it completely freaks me out that we could still catch it, too. I know I've said in the past that the staff at Phoenix Children's Hospital can be quite good looking, but I really don't desire to meet any of them again anytime soon. For reals.