Source
r/childfree•
mielelf

The nieces' Christmas gift to us - the daycare cold and possible strep

SUPPORT

I just canceled our "fancy dress" Xmas Eve dinner reservations and ran to the grocery store for soup ingredients. I am beside myself. We go to the inlaws over the weekend, and there's three niblings - nieces 7 & 5, nephew 2. Now my father in law had a bone marrow transplant 3 months ago, but was doing well enough he could go home for Christmas. He still needs to wear a mask in public and can't do too much. My MIL is firmly in the r/JUSTNOMIL awards, but FIL is a sweet guy who tries. BIL and his wife are both medical doctors of one kind or another, so we figured they'd take the whole "FIL doesn't quite have a full immune system yet," seriously. Nope.

Turns out all three of the kids had step this last week, but it's "OK because they have antibiotics." OK, sure, but technically that only makes them less contagious, it's a curve downward, not a cliff. And the littlest one is coughing and sniffling because they basically live at daycare and he has "something". (The mom was bragging last year that each parent spent an entire half hour with the kids everyday! Wasn't that great?! Dad got them ready in the morning, but didn't get home until after bedtime, but mom picked them up from daycare, fed them dinner and put them to bed. Wow, a full 30 minutes!)

I have a compromised immune system, not that anyone cares, but FIL is just barely rebuilding his! This summer during chemo, he caught cdiff after the kids visited, but nobody knows how! Daycare is crawling with that, literal, shit! My husband as a reenforced titanium immune system and he's sick. I'm sick and debating if I need a throat culture, but we're not the rich childfree type and I'd hate to spend triple our fancy dinner budget on Urgent Care, especially since drinking tea is helping, so I mostly have myself convinced to wait a bit.

I just need some support. If we say anything, BIL tells us that "the only thing FIL has to live for is his grandkids!" We can't compete with that, we are chopped liver. I'm sick, I'm grumpy, we just got rid of our Christmas Mice and now we're too sick to enjoy what's left of Christmas because FIL had to see the grandkids. My husband turned me to childfree, but I admit the older I get, the more I think stupid parents ruin everything.

EDIT: Yup, FIL is sick, MIL went in for a strep test (quick one is negative and her doctor thinks it is just a virus) AND they "have no idea where this virus came from!" I cannot even with these people!

Posted Dec 24, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC · edited

8420
TheDragonsareBarking•

Yeah, the only thing fil has to live for is the kids until they kill him. Good lord, how damn selfish.

45
mielelfOP•

That's pretty much what we said after the cdiff thing this summer. It's not like you can't facetime or something these days! My poor husband though, everyone keeps telling him his dad is only fighting to live because of the grandkids and he keeps asking what happens to the first kid he made! Nope, DH didn't make babies, chopped liver, not worth living for.

25
Darkliandra33f - childfree - cat enthusiast•

Wow so selfish. I mean maybe he could enjoy retirement otherwise? oO

Get well soon tho and have that fancy dinner in the next year :)

5
mielelfOP•

Thanks! I'm definitely going to get my fancy dinner in a few weeks, I've decided. Might not be quite the same, but chicken noodle soup and cough drops will have to do for night, and in return, fancy dinner should come later - holiday or not!

6
GirlGamer7•

Ugh! Cdiff sucks! My mom had it I think it was last year or the year before. It sucked ass! Fortunately I didn't catch it but we have no idea how she got it!

3
Winterixes•

Don’t babies and some young children just like, have cdiff as part of their microbiome? So gross.

I hope you start to feel better soon OP and salvage Christmas for yourselves.

16
mielelfOP•

That's basically my understanding about kids and cdiff in daycare, but I only have a medical minor so I get told to shut up a lot around the "Real doctors" and MIL.

Thanks for the support, it's so wonderful to have at least one place I can be heard.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

14
thr0wfarawayNever go full doormat. Not your circus. Not your monkeys.•

Hose people are lunatics. And plague carriers.

Sounds like the las time you need to be around them.

10
Relative-Agent•

I salt water gargle when my throat starts to feel like bacteria is closing it up, I landed myself at the doctors office with a heavy fever and throat so swollen I hadn't take in real solid food in three days so it was pretty miserable. I'd say when it becomes next to impossible to swallow then it's worth the trip to emergency care but if you can avoid dropping that money then tea and salt water gargle will help, I also a nettie pot to keep my sinuses clear.

I hate getting sick and everyone in my life knows that if they're sick they gotta tell me because I will absolutely avoid them, one friend keeps bringing her kids to wings night and the last time this snotty kid reaches over the grab a napkin only to contaminate the whole pile. Lord help me but I am sitting as far away from her dripping kids as I can, I refuse to let crotch goblins get me sick.

4
mielelfOP•

Thanks for the advice and the support! So far I can still drink with only a little wincing, but I always forget the salt water trick and will definitely do that later. All my friends know that I get sick so easily, and thankfully they're pretty supportive, but I guess I figured if germs could kill FIL, it would somehow change the attitudes of the narcissistic family. My bad.

I'm with you on the napkins. I never take the top one, the top plate, anything. People at work look at me funny for "wasting paper" and I start quoting how my carbon footprint is so low being childfree. We don't get Healthcare through work either, so I follow that up with they can afford an extra napkin for me to throw away, because they ain't paying my Urgent Care bill! Now several of my coworkers actively make sure I get a "fresh" batch of napkins. Ha!

3
Relative-Agent•

You would think they wouldn't wanna try killing the guy since he sounds so nice, people are so eff'ing weird. I also get rid of that top napkin too lol, I swear the amount of nasty fuckers out there sneezing all over shit has made me overly aware of the hot zones for contamination, I am not about that sick life either and my immune system isn't even compromised.

2
snuggie-wiggle•

I will never eat at a buffet or a salad bar ever because I have seen kids stick their filthy hands into the food and taste it only to stick their hands in something else. The parents watch them do it and don't even tell them not to do that.

I used to really enjoy eating out but since parents are to lazy to teach their goblins how to act in public I cannot do something I once enjoyed.

2
Relative-Agent•

They recently changed my grocery store so the hot food items are self serve with tiny sneeze guards over them, now I can't have cheap chinese food because all I can think about is germy people contaminating it with coughing, sneezing or tasting.

2
Fluffbrained-cat•

Oh my god. That is beyond cruel to FIL - you don’t take strep infected anything round a person with a compromised immune system, never mind contagious kids!!! I know its not the kids fault but jeez, a little parental common sense would be nice. And you as well. Way to ruin Christmas.

4
aspiring_geek83•

How the hell are these people doctors?!

I’m sorry they ruined your plans because their walking plague boils needed to be aired out.

3
greffedufois•

I have an antivaxer relative. They don't give a shit that their son could kill me. Because 'itll never happen to us!'.

I'd feel terrible if my nephew ever contracted one of the many diseases he could easily be protected from. But if I catch any of them (mmr/chicken pox, influenza) I'm in the hospital for upwards of a month. I have to go on IVIG and stop my anti rejection meds. Then let the illness run its course, and if I don't die from it, hope my body hasn't started to reject my liver. If it has they'll give me a fuckton of steroids that rot my bones. If it doesn't work and my liver failed again, id need another transplant.

Fucking fuck that.

I think anti-vax breeders are the most infuriating thing on the planet. They actively don't give a shit about anyone but themselves and their kids. These are the same idiots who bring their sick kids to visit Grandma in the nursing home and then several residents end up dying. Hospitals too.

(Sorry for the rant, ive been dealing with this shit for 3 years since nephew was born. And i can't stand that smug 'i know better' attitude my husbands cousins wife has. She's an obese moron who believes in conspiracy theories and essential oils. This same moron wonders why her son has hypoglycemia. Maybe because she had gestational diabetes while pregnant but 'didnt believe in it's so she didn't take her meds, didn't take her prenatal vitamins, and continued smoking. Also gained like 100lbs so she was easily over 300. She was also surprised when she gave birth to a nearly 10lb baby. I'm kind of glad she tore, the fucking moron. And oddly enough, despite not letting her son recieve any vaccines, vitamin K or silver nitrate, she has him circumcised. Apparently her words were 'make sure not to cut his penis off!'

Most anti vaxers are anti circumcision so at least theyre consistent. She is not.

3
i-miss-winter•

You could always try sliding scale or low income clinics that will work with you so you don’t have to bust out the big bucks at Urgent Care. Here’s a tool to find some: https://www.needymeds.org/medical-clinics

2
mielelfOP•

Usually a good suggestion, but in my immediate area, they all stopped being sliding scale after ACA passed. (Basically they help you sign up for the state insurance or Medicaid and that's it.) I'm up voting for exposure though, because this is excellent advice and I've made use of sliding scale clinics in the past.

1
gytherin•

Oh gosh, I hope he's OK. :(

1
[deleted]•

[removed]

1