Friday Flashback: Sick Days

Seeing how the entire week was just a continuous string of sick days for me, I thought it would be a good challenge to go through the photo album archives to try to find pictures of Mrs. TBF and I when we've been sick. And, you know what?

There aren't many to choose from, but definitely more of me (various surgeries) than of Mrs. TBF.

I guess it makes sense. I mean, who takes pictures of people when they're sick?

After hours...ok...minutes of research, I was actually able to scrounge up a couple.

As you may be able to tell, this picture was taken quite a long time ago. It was, in fact, taken in late October, 1987 while we were on our honeymoon in Tahiti - actually, this picture was taken on the island of Moorea. We had flown from Chicago to Papeete (via Los Angeles), the day before. We spent the first night outside of Papeete, and then the next day we took a "puddle-jumper" airplane to the island of Moorea.

Being jet lagged and all, I decided to take a nap when we got settled into our little thatch hut bungalow. Some time later, I was stirred from my sleep by Mrs. TBF whispering: "There's a gecko sleeping on your hand." At that same moment, I felt that I had a scratchy throat, and...I was convinced that the gecko had given me some kind of rare tropical disease. I jumped out of bed like a sissy, and tried to swat the gecko off the back of my hand. Finding that it had suctioned itself to the back of my hand, mild panic began to set in, but I somehow managed to eventually get the (two-inch) man-eating beast off of my hand; sending it scampering out of our hut. A little while later, Mrs. TBF snapped this picture of me calming my nerves - and deadening the pain of my scratchy throat (which eventually matured into a full-blown cold - with a nice, icy Mai Tai; her first exposure to the marital man-cold!

I really had to dig deep to find a sick picture of Mrs. TBF because she really doesn't get sick that often. But I'm happy to say that I found a real doozy! We have to zip ahead nearly fourteen years for this one from June, 2001.

After about fourteen years of caring for my man-colds (probably about thirty in total), Mrs. TBF came down with chicken pox. We found out later that it was going through our neighborhood, and Mrs. TBF had never had it as a child. Getting chicken pox is never pleasant, but what made Mrs. TBF's case especially bad was that she came down with it while she was on a business trip.

She was flying to New York and kind of felt itchy during the flight. It wasn't until she was at her hotel getting ready for bed that she noticed her entire torso was covered with little spots.

To make a long story short: she called the health clinic at work which told her not to come in and to just stay in her hotel room for the next week, decided that wasn't going to happen, booked the next flight back to Zürich, and then called me to tell give me her flight details. After caking on a bunch of makeup so that nobody on the flight would notice, she flew back to Zürich the day after arriving in NYC.

I picked her up in Zürich, brought her home, and...then I LEFT FOR CHICAGO THE NEXT DAY FOR TWO WEEKS! Just for the record, I offered to cancel my trip, but she said she'd be fine with Dominique. I spent two weeks visiting friends and family while Mrs. TBF spent two weeks dabbing her face with calamine lotion (or whatever the Swiss equivalent is) and walking Dominique early in the morning and late in the evening in order to avoid seeing as many people as possible.

Aren't I a jerk?