Our family gets sick a lot. When one of us goes down, the rest usually follow. Josiah typically starts it, but not always. When we lived in Ohio, we were sick often.

I thought it had to do with being a large family, cooped up indoors most of the year, sharing germs. I used to joke with the pediatrician that he should add a wing at the end of the hall for our family to live in. We visited him often. He thought it was a great idea. It would have saved us lots of time.

We moved back to Texas 6 years ago. I just knew living in a warmer climate would make a huge difference. I just knew we would all gets lots of fresh air. I just knew we would be a much healthier family. The first week we were here, we contracted a stomach virus. Every one of us came down with it. We were living in temporary housing at the time. Thank goodness. We gave the carpet in that place a run for its money. We were sick for weeks. It was no fun.

I often wonder how big families with lots of people and lots of germs escape frequent illness. Imagine the family on T.V. with 19 children. Do they quarantine their kids when any of them gets sick? How do they prevent the whole family from catching what anyone else has? It’s a mystery to me.

In our case, I always thought Josiah started the fun. I figured because he mouths quite a bit, it was only natural to assume he picks up more germs than the rest of us. And then he shares them. But Josiah is not always the first one to get sick. Sometimes one of the older kids gets sick first. Josiah almost always gets sick when any of the rest of us is sick though. Poor little guy. He’s a trooper though.

The most recent illness was in January. Just a week after returning from the residential treatment center, Josiah became quite ill. He had only been back to school for 4 or 5 days. Who knows where he picked up whatever he picked up, but it was a doozey. He was violently ill for 21 days. We just narrowly escaped hospitalization.

This week 4 out of 7 of us are sick. I should keep face masks on hand. The 3 of us who are still feeling good should wear them round the clock. We should sterilize everything that is touched. We should bathe in anti-bacterial scrub. But we don’t. Maybe we should move into a hotel till it all blows over.

Hopefully we’ve built up enough immunity by now to escape this latest bout of illness. I seriously doubt it. I’m sure by this time next week 4 of us will be back to normal and 3 of us will be feeling poorly. That’s just the way it goes.

Could be my imagination, but today, my stomach has been cramping just a bit.