Its arrived with a bang.... cold and flu season is upon us and it has often made me a nervous wreck.
For the average healthy child a cold or flu is a nuisance but it isn't overly dangerous, for a person with cancer it can be at worst fatal.
I've never really been a mom that's been a big germ-a-phobe, I've let my boys play in dirt, puddle jump, and I've watched with only slight disgust as one of them ate a piece of chewing gum off a movie theater floor but this is different.
I am now noticing how dirty and germ infested things are and more concerning to me is how dirty and germ infested people are.
I cringe when the woman at Tim Hortons handles my cash and then makes my coffee without washing her hands first, debit terminals are handled by hundreds of people everyday, elevator buttons, door knobs... germs are everywhere and there is no avoiding it.
All I can do is teach my children by example, we wash our hands often, cough into our elbows instead of our hands, avoid touching our faces and try whenever possible to not share drinks etc.
The part that gets me frustrated though is the amount of people that are so unconcerned and unaware, that will hack all over you, wipe their nose and then touch something or worse, use the washroom and not wash their hands.
We recently were at the developmental pediatricians office and a child in the waiting room was obviously sick. As she coughed, sputtered and constantly perfected the art of the sleeve wipe that most children do, her parents sat and chatted about how clearly ineffective the antibiotics were but never once wiped her nose, gave a reminder to cover her mouth or washed her hands with the antibacterial products that are provided on every wall.
At one point the sun shining through the window provided the perfect lighting for me to clearly see the products of a sneeze travel at light speed and land on the back of Kurt's head (mental note: disinfect Kurt's head with the antibacterial foam by the door).
When Kurt coughed into his elbow I offered praise for "coughing properly" and reminded him that we need to always cover to help keep the germs away from Nick....
I thought perhaps that at the very least these parents would think that I'm a snotty b*tch and would either instruct their child to cover her mouth or would go out to the hallway away from the toys but nope they didn't even blink an eye.
Clearly I again expected too much.
On another occasion I watched a woman leave the mall bathroom without even turning on the tap, I wondered if it would make any difference if she knew that its possible now that a medically fragile person could be hospitalized, require blood products or worse... because she couldn't take two minutes to rub some soap around on her hands (not probable but indeed possible).
Yes, I am aware that our Mothers always told us that its nice to share - but I don't think illness was what they had in mind.
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