My little guys are at the age now where they are both attending preschool/daycare, which essentially means that being sick is an ever-present threat that we simply have to live with in our house right now. They go and mingle with other children, swap bacteria like trading cards, and then bring it home like a game of russian roulette where we see who it gets passed to, and who gets spared.
As someone who works from home, and thus has no real cause to ever get sick unless someone hand delivers the virus to my personal space, this was… an adjustment. But I’m fine with it, because I understand that as they get sick now, it helps their bodies develope their immune systems, which will help them later.
What I can’t wrap my head around, however, is how their little virus that gives them a sniffly nose and which they shrug off and play through, lays me the fuck out every time. I assume they just have the energy to spare, whereas I’m always burning the candle at both ends so I’ve got nothing in reserve. A head cold comes in with its hand out like “pay up” and I have to turn out my pockets. “Sorry, I got nothing left. Guess I’ll just crawl into bed now.”
Speaking of kids and school and emptying pockets, (segue level: master), SUMO is having a Back To School sale with 15% off. Now I know what you’re thinking, “How do I justify a huge comfy beanbag chair as a ‘school expense?'”
Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. You sew a couple of straps to the thing; boom, its your new backpack. Just unzip it, toss your books inside with all the fluff, and you’re good to go. Sure, it’s huge and unwieldy, but when you fall down a lot, you know you’re falling onto a super comfortable beanbag chair. There’s like literally no downside to this.
Or, more traditionally, you could put it in your dorm room to make the dorm room suck less.
Picture not there
Not loaded at all?
Same. There’s nothing but the two sets of previous, next, etc. buttons.
Yup. Check in the morning.
check again later, tim will solve this as soon as he notices something is wrong
probably incapacitated by a new virus strain…
It’s not because they have more energy, but it is because there immune system is not yet that strong. You feel more sick because you have a stronger immune response which is causing the sick feeling (raised temperature, …)
When I was in chemo I didn’t get sick. Also, a fever of 1° was worth a trip to emerge because I’d be on the edge of septic death.
You get sick on vacation because your immune system finally gets to clean fikkn house. The rest of the time your stress level is suppressing the normal immune response enough that you don’t feel sick even though the invaders have breeched the ramparts.
Tim, same here. 😀 It’s like “3 weeks daycare, 2 weeks sick” with space for spreading in a round-robin manner (child get sick, we get infected, child gets cured, we are still in treatment, child gets sick, we are cured… and so on… one would say: “Never-ending stoooooorrryyyyyyyyyyy… na-na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na…” :P).
PS. Is the comic not loading because of a bug or because of sickness (no comic today to begin with?).
Picture not here.
As to why you get sicker than your kid, I’m not a doctor, but a doctor explained it to me like this. Your kid has an imperfect immune system. It can catch a disease from something that could never harm you (and your adult immune system). However, when your kid falls ill, the disease evolves and develops in its body and by the time it hits you, it’s much more powerful and hits you hard. The child meanwhile gets over it as its body adapts.
Also, testosterone. It was proven in a study a while back that testosterone causes the effects of colds to be worse. That’s why ‘man flu’ is an actual thing. It’s not that women cope with colds better, it actually hits men harder (well ok, and women cope with it better).
Daycare/Preschool = Virus of the month club
Oh man, funny because it’s true… There was a time when I was rarely sick. Such a distant memory.
Tim, what my wife and I have done with our kids is have hand sanitizer in our cars. When we pick them up from school, they use a ridiculous amount of the stuff to make sure they at least kill SOME of the crap they pick up from other kids.. That was the compromise – I wanted them to either wear hazmat suits (https://www.amazon.com/Fun-World-Hazmat-Costume-Multicolor/dp/B00WCZZ7UY) or burn their clothes daily during flu season…….
Now if only I could wear a hazmat suit at work every day.
Are you holding up lately? Looks like a dream come true
How about instead of burning your clothes, you just scorch them briefly. You know, just enough to kill off most of the pathogens.
No sense in wasting a perfectly good set of shirts in one go; being able to reuse them three more times is nice.
Dryer set on high should do the trick 🙂
Yeah, it is crazy how quickly kids can go from “I am so sick I am dying” to “i am healthy again and wanna play play play!”.
One or two of our kids and foster kids would always start getting sick on Tuesday. Two days after being in the pre-school or kindergarten Sunday School class.
Yup.
My sister turned me on to this wonder tonic called elder berry. At the first signs of sickness, take some of this stuff in some water. I swear the sickness goes away so much quicker. If the sickness takes hold, zicam and water.
I have found gargling apple cider vinegar also puts in some work. Mix a little bit with water so it isn’t like drinking fire. Every four or so hours.
Seen this time and again with our kids. I unwittingly brought one to work earlier this year and wiped out half the office. People then took it home and wiped out their families. One guy ended up developing a pleurisy on his lung and another one gave it to his elderly father who went a bit nuts like he had dementia for a time. It was quite spectacular to say my daughter was only ill for a couple days. I think these bugs stay in schools for decades. They sort of move from host child to host child slowly growing… Read more »
You’re not actually raising a child, you’re raising a walking petri dish.
Wait, so we are all walking petri dishes? That explains a lot.
If there was a Like button, I’d hit it.
We have the same problem from taking our kids to church. Otherwise they stay at home since are home schooling. Every other or third week on Tuesday we’re biting our nails to whether or not our son will bring something home to us and his younger brother.
Same thing here! My wife’s a stay-at-home mom and so usually the only person who brings sickness into the house is me, but our little one gave both of us a really nasty cold two days after church the other day.
If I could count the number of times my petri dish nephews have reduced me to sub-zombie level while exhibiting no symptoms more egregious than a slight cough, I’d still have finders to count on.
Yep…day care curse. It’s a thing. It’ll get better. I have no idea how the teachers survive this.
Virus and bacteria are two different kinds of creatures.
The same way that plants and animals are.
Sure, they both carry diseases and might have similar transmission but they are not the same thing.
Pet-peeve tantrum, over.
Also, in your case, Tim, it might have to do with the fact that you now live in a more secluded lifestyle and therefore YOUR immune system has gone to hell, whereas, your children’s immune system is brand new and learning.
Also, there’s the age factor.
Common cold becomes increasingly more devastating as you get older.
Hope you feel better soon.
Sorry Tim, but it’s been bugging me also. Please don’t take antibiotics for a cold or other viral diseases. I’d love to read CAD for another 20 years and not die in an actual pandemic.
The odds of getting lice, in my experience, decline sharply after 5th grade. The reason for this seems to be because tiny children mess around so much that lice spreads like a wildfire.Though there’s probably many, many factors.
I’ve sometimes run into people who use the tired old line “You don’t have kids, so you don’t know”. Be that as it may, I CAN see others being miserable, what with plague inc being unleashed in Tim’s house, the temper tantrums at the grocery store that I have born witness to, the parent teacher conferences I have such FOND memories of, etc. Soon enough, they’ll be asking for a car that you don’t have the money for, or doing that odd medley of mistakes that is so common in the game of life and experience that we all have… Read more »
Not at all gaming related, but I love it anyway. Same amount of personal investment here and it shows!
I used to work in a pediatricians office, and honestly, the best thing you can do is expose yourself to as many germs as possible. You’ll be constantly sick for about a year, but afterward you’re basically immune to the common cold. The more you work your immune system the stronger it gets. I even (and I admit this is REALLY gross) had a kid with the flu sneeze directly into my mouth and I had no symptoms at all. I hear it’s the same for teacher and other childcare workers. Also, getting enough rest really does help. Get some… Read more »
Actually was quarantined once because of this. Dated a woman while i was in the Navy that had a kid. Kid gets a minor cold and when i get back to my ship I wind up with a reaction so bad that I get stuck in quarantine for 3 days and have to be hydrated through saline injections. I tried drinking water and would wind up puking bile every time. It was…unpleasant.
This has been your yearly reminder that we’re constantly breathing a fine mist of each other’s spit.
You are welcome.
Stock up on syrup of choice, get vaccinated, blah blah blah.
Technically we’re also breathing in a fine mist made of dinosaurs, satellites, asteroids and at least one of your dead ancestor’s ashes.
There are some motorcycle autoplaying ads. Just making note.
First year of Kindergarten, my son brought EVERYTHING home. Flu, Hand-Foot-Mouth, Head Lice, and countless colds. Until they build that immunity, it’s navigating a minefield.
Just to clarify some points guys: first of all your imune system doesn’t works like a muscle, it does not get stronger as you use it, it grows specific imunities towards specific pathogens. So the reason you start to get less ill with time is due to your contact to as many viruses as possible. And you don’t get imune to certain traits of bacteria, like staphilocucus or streptococcus, you can be imune to toxins generated by them but not to them. Pneumococus and hemophilus yes, tuberculosis yes. But those aren’t common deseases you got from school classes. You have… Read more »
Plus, I live the way you draw your kid, he looks realy cute!
This happened to me. I got the flu. I was ok, but then the same flu KNOCKED MY OLD MAN OUT. I don’t even get it.
One of the reasons I get my flu shot each year as soon as I can.
School teacher, somewhat immuno-suppressed due to diabetes and age, in contact with several hundrerd school-age youngsters every day. I may get a reaction from my immune system to the shot itself, a day of fevers, chills, and general discomfort, but rather that than a full flu.
So, this will probably sound like some crazy person pushing snake oil. But try it, if it helps, you’ll thank me for it later. We have 5 kids, so we know what good little incubators they can be better than most. We started using apple cider vinegar (must contain “The Mother”, I know, bizarre sounding name) to help boost immune response. We haven’t had a major illness in nearly 2 years now. We’ve had two colds briefly rear their heads for less than 24 hours, and neither my wife or I became ill. Teaspoon per kid morning and night, with… Read more »
I work at a place where I’ve constantly got people showing up from all over the world, and don’t usually get sick from it. But a few years ago, I visited a friend’s house, whose kid was in day care, and the child apparently managed to carry home some sort of toxic biohazard that I somehow got exposed to. All I did was have a beer and watch the ballgame, and ended up with the freaking norovirus (or something similar) for my troubles, which took me down for a week, and inadvertently passed it on to my dad, nearly killing… Read more »
Hand foot and mouth disease. Usually only kids get it. I did too… it’s no joke. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone…
August 2020, schools about to fully reopen. Comic doesn’t quite hit the same way.
I’m just saying it is 2021 and this comic was premonitory… do you have any other predictions in your sleeves Tim?