Help, I'm Trapped!

I feel like standing in my front window with a hand scrawled sign saying"Help Me". You know, the kind kids used to make and hold up in car windows while travelling with parents in un-airconditioned cars, crammed together, seatbeltless, bored to the point of risking their poor unsuspecting innocent parents arrest. Obviously I have digressed terribly here.

What I guess I am trying to say, is there are days when I feel trapped, I mean trapped like a small helpless animal whose leg gets caught in one of those inhumane leg jaws. And I am ready to gnaw off my leg.

There is no simple way to describe how challenging it is to be stuck at home, when you have a sick child on hand and no means of escape. I'm not talking the kind of sick, where you are truly worried for your child's safety. I just mean, the kind of sick where even a trip to the grocery store is too much. I know, there are probably eye rolls and the likes, but sweet Jesus it can feel like an eternity.

Just when you think the snot has abated and you get ready to regain some ground, you're thrust back into the reality that at any moment you'll be imprisoned once again. Sleepless nights, stumbling around in a stupor most of the day, swilling black coffee, which only makes you jittery and short tempered. It's exhausting just thinking about it. Now do it, two or three weeks in a row.

For those of us with more than one child, it gets passed down the ranks pretty rapidly...and you hold your breath waiting for the next bout of illness to hit your house, steal your sleep, and rob you of your patience.

I am ashamed to say that I am not one of those lovely moms who fawn over their loved ones while they are at deaths door. Instead I am snappy and irritated. Annoyed that once again someone is passing their germs onto another unsuspecting family member, and it falls primarily on me, to be the caregiver, cleaner and nurse. I am pretty much trapped, yes that's right, trapped.