Gents, I apologise for the crushing blow I’m about to deliver. It’s long been acknowledged that Manflu is the worst of all ailments. I’ve listened to years of claims that nothing – not even childbirth – comes close to the suffering of a male with a temperature.
However, budge over blokes, because I’ve now discovered that you don’t win the poorly prize.
I’ve just spent a week at the mercy of a virus that took me to the very brink of despair. Forget Manflu – I’ve had Mumflu.
It had all the symptoms of the general flu – raised temperature, sweats, chills, sore head, weak limbs, sneezes, and a cough that sounds like three corgis singing Tom Jones songs on the karaoke.
But Mumflu also comes with a crushing psychological blow – in the midst of my snot-fuelled anguish, I learned that I’m not, in fact, indispensable.
Sorry, had to stop and clutch my chest in a dramatic fashion after typing that last sentence.
How can that be? How can this house continue to function when I’m not there, in the trenches, co-ordinating Operation Low?
On a normal day, I’m the one hustling my teenage sons out to school, checking showers are taken, teeth are brushed, and attempting to limit hair-gelling to less than five minutes.
I organise their routines with military precision: homework, school run, lunches, after-school activities, chores and sport. They’re both basketball players and train most nights, so there’s another set of runs, kits and strategic planning for weekend games that take place all over the country.
Logistics aside, I counsel them when they have worries, shop for nutritious meals, make sure they eat at the right time, and remind them that a strawberry tart doesn’t count as one of their five a day.
My parenting extends to our pooch, who gets walked, fed and reassured that she is in fact the most gorgeous labradoodle in the nation.
Wifely duties are also in the mix. Love, affection, laughs and trying not to mention the words ‘mid-life crisis’ when he comes home from the shops sporting a brand-new bomber jacket. Incidentally, honey, I love you, but I hope you kept the receipt.
Then there’s general housework, cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, refereeing, arranging our social lives, planning holidays and paying bills.
And, in between all that, I work full time.
In short, I’m the knackered lynchpin of the Lows, the person at the core of the family who gets through it all by telling herself that they couldn’t do it without me, that their lives would come crashing down if I wasn’t there to handle their sweaty kit bags in the manner of radioactive waste.
But no more. Sob. Saint Shari of the Control Freakery Motherhood came down with the flu and, for the first time ever, I was forced to take to my chambers for three days of shivers, sweats and self-pity.
And yet… the world kept turning. I expected to emerge blinking into the sunlight, to a family on the edge of meltdown. Apparently not.
They made it to school. They made it to training. I’ve no idea what they ate or drank, but they seem to still be functioning, so I’m guessing they didn’t spend seventy-two hours eating nothing but Cheesy Wotsits. The house looks like it’s been ransacked, the washing pile belongs in the Pyrenees, and I’m fairly sure they’re wearing odd socks, but they’re fine. Even the labradoodle seems nonplussed.
How can that be? Couldn’t they even have pretended that it had all gone to hell without me? Oh, the pain. The suffering.
Gents, you have it easy – Manflu usually disappears after a few days of sympathy and pampering.
But Mumflu? Paracetamol and bed might sort out the virus, but realising that you’re not needed leaves scars that will last a lifetime. Sniff.