Knockout

Snowboarding with my dad.
Abundantly blessed.

I think it’s safe to say that I am getting really good at rolling with the punches. Well, maybe not really good. But at least better. And perhaps this is good for me. I am not, as most of you know, a particularly laid back person. I go big, I like things on time, I like things as planned, and I like things done well. And I really hate waiting.

I've also never thought that I had particularly bad luck. In fact, in 2011 when my daughter was born, I thought I was an unfairly blessed person who had never endured any real hardship.  I still think that I’m unfairly blessed in the grand scheme of things, but I think I can cross hardship off the list. (I’m pretty sure leukemia counts.)

But the hits just keep on coming. And the last one that landed was the flu. Wait, scratch that. The very last one that landed was pneumonia. Smack. Pow.

Cousins! Sharing pink eye! And the flu!

Our flu saga began with my two year old daughter (Patient Zero), who coughed so hard at our family Christmas party on December 22 that she threw up. That was our first clue that Christmas 2013 was going to be epic. The next day, my son was coughing too, and we heard that our niece and nephew, with whom we had played a few days before, were also unwell. On Christmas day, my sister-in-law was violently ill and my daughter was a miserable, feverish mess. On Boxing Day, my sister got a sore throat while snowboarding, and my brother-in-law was incapacitated on the couch. On December 27 another sister-in-law was ill, her kids still not better, and on December 28 my mother-in-law ended up in the ER (she’s OK). On December 29 we had pizza instead of turkey with my in-laws because no one felt well enough to cook, and that night I ended up at the ER with my daughter because she took a turn for the worse (she’s OK too). On December 30 my nephew got pink eye. On January 1, my husband started vomiting and I started coughing. And on January 3, when my daughter and husband finally started to feel better, I came down with a raging fever. On January 4, we did our family photo shoot while my sister and I had feverish chills, and my niece was now the one with pink eye (those pictures are going to be awesome, by the way). By the time we flew out of Vancouver on January 7, I was seriously ill, my dad was in bed with the flu, my other sister-in-law was sick, and my mom had pink eye too. No word of a lie.

And then we arrived at Pearson Airport.

Most of you in North America know about the travel chaos that erupted on January 6 and 7 due to extreme weather conditions and hundreds upon hundreds of flight cancellations. We flew out of Vancouver knowing that Toronto was in iced chaos, but we figured that since they were flying us out there rather than keeping us in BC, then things must be easing up.

Well. You can all guess how that turned out.

They flew us into Toronto knowing full-well that it was chaos. Shortly after our plane landed, Pearson halted all incoming Canadian flights, meaning we were just hours short of being able to stay in Vancouver another day. We were definitely grateful not to be stuck on the tarmac with two hungry kids for hours, as many others were, but our connection to Ottawa was cancelled before we even landed.

My little super traveller.

So my husband bravely stepped into the daunting WestJet lineup to re-book our flight, while I took two extra-strength cold and flu tablets and tried to entertain the kids. For hours. It was really fun. Two thumbs way up.

There’s a thing about insanely busy airports full of irate people. You don’t want to have the flu there, and no one wants you to have the flu there. Despite my into-the-elbow coughing and obsessive hand washing, I could almost watch the pandemic unfolding as people walked past me and then onto their planes (I’m sorry).

We couldn't get a flight home that day, so we were given a hotel voucher and sent off to the Marriott for the night (presumably so I could infect more of Toronto).  Not too shabby, except that we didn't have our luggage.

Oh well, I thought, the kids can just swim in the hotel pool in their undies. Until I realized that they are too young to swim alone, and, well…let’s just say neither parent was up for that particular public spectacle.

But no big deal – our flight left at nine the next morning. Not much time to kill, right? The kids could binge watch two hours of TV, go to bed, get up, and fly home. Easy peasy.

Due to my cough, I called my transplant nurse to cancel my pulmonary function test scheduled for the next day. She asked me to come in for a chest x-ray, as she suspected I had pneumonia. That possibility had never crossed my mind, despite having pneumonia last winter (most of the time, I tend to believe that I'm less sick than I actually am). I mentioned that I had heard something on the news that high-risk patients who had the flu should immediately start on Tamiflu, but I didn't think that applied to me anymore.

Dead to the world at 9am.
Why can't this happen every Saturday?

“Am I still considered high risk?” I asked her.

“Yes!”

Oh. I hadn't even planned to tell them that I had the flu, except to cancel that test. Oops. She then informed me that if I couldn't get out of Toronto the next day, I would have to go to a hospital there. (See what I mean about rolling with the punches? You start to get really good with practice.)

Since we were still on Pacific time, it felt like the middle of the night when our alarm went off. We groggily checked our email to find our flight cancelled. Again. We were now scheduled to leave at 5:30pm instead of 9:00am. Another day in the Polar Vortex of Toronto with no bags, hats, mitts, or bathing suits. We rolled right on over and went back to sleep. Late checkout please.

Hunting for our bags at Pearson.

In the end, we did find our bags, and our flight did eventually leave, but not before I splurged on snacks with our $10 a person food vouchers. Fruit, almonds and cheese for everyone! (Yes, we live large.) I went to the hospital the next day, where I was diagnosed with pneumonia and pleural effusions, immediately put on IV antibiotics, and told that I would need to be admitted. I had no idea how sick I was. But after much begging, they finally allowed me to go home, where I am slowly recovering. (Though I am thinking about becoming the official mascot for antibiotics. Maybe I could score some free medicine.)

So what is the moral of this awesome story?

When Patient Zero is a coughing, vomiting, snot-wiping, saliva-spreading two-year-old, don’t bother running. She got you already.

And always, always pack bathing suits in your carry-on.