I'm a Psycho

I'm a germ psycho.  Really, I have issues.  Growing up I had a fairly crippling puke phobia.  Full blown panic attacks and the whole 9 yards.  2 failed shrinks later, my kids had to put me through immersion therapy to desensitize me with their 8 stomach bugs of 2010.  It worked, I'm a lot less squeemish.  The down side... knowledge is power right?

Not necessarily. I googled and read so much information on stomach bugs... incubation periods, contamination periods, sustainability outside the body, how to avoid, how to clean, what to eat, what to avoid.  So... now when someone tells me, "We just got over a stomach bug. So we are no longer contagious." I feel like yelling "NO! You and your ...liquid... is contagious for 2 more weeks! Stay away."

Or "Well, you are most contagious before you show symptoms."  Wrong. You are contagious before symptoms if you have the absolutely dreaded rotavirus.  But for *any* other stomach bug strains, you are not contagious until symptoms present themselves."  That's actually good news bc when I hear that someone we played with yesterday is sick today... no biggie and if one of my kids gets sick I feel like I have a clean slate to start sanitizing then instead of feeling like everything is already germ infested. On the flip-side, when I hear someone was *just* sick and now we are playing with them... AHHH.

I'm a nut.

I realize that.  Last night I laid in bed in my hyper-mode that I get into when I'm frazzled and simply prayed: "God... please help me to CHILL."  I would have loved to pray "Keep my children healthy."  or many other things but the bottom line is that I have this crazy metal handicap surrounding kids and stomach bugs.

I need to chill out.... reeeeelax... and go with the flow.  My winter germ craziness is seriously annoying.  I analyze and plan and can.not.relax.

So this is my goal... I'm *not* going to let my germophobe-ness get in the way this winter.  And we'll see if it backfires or if we stay relatively healthy despite my lack of hyper-vigilence.

Are you ready to put my in a pretty padded room?  I'm a piece of work, I tell ya.