Biological Hazzards

When I dropped my son of at dagis this morning I was greeted by two big signs on the door, one saying that stomach flu had been reported and another saying that chicken pox had also been reported.

I couldn't help thinking of the foot and mouth outbreak in Britain. Only they were still letting kids go to dagis anyway. My wife and I have both had chicken pox, so I guess the sooner my son gets it over with the better, but stomach flu is a terrible thing to have. Not for him of course, he's just two and a half and barely notices he's ill, but for us, the parents.

When you have a kid with stomach flu you know that everytime you clean up a pool of projectile vomit or change a particulary messy nappy you are playing russian roulette with your internal digestive system. I've had it twice now and whenever my kids get sick I want to jump into a bio hazzard suit.

Maybe stomach flu should be treated just like foot and mouth and the dagis should be quarantined and nobody allowed to go within 3km of it. ........Well, ok maybe burning all the kids on big bonfire would be going too far.... but at least it would contain things....

I live in dread of the stomach flu season and all the colds I catch from my kids. It makes the winter months really tough. If its a bad year I barely have time to get healthy before spring and the hayfever season starts.

I hope that by the time they grow out of this I will have an immune system so tough and battle hardened it will be like a detatchment of marines and this will get me through the later years of life.

Until then I'll carry on trying to drop my kid off each morning without breathing the air, talking to anyone or touching anything.......