Why do we answer our phones at times?

All in my house have been pretty healthy throughout the winter season, no flu bugs or any real sickness so far. My sister, who is a pretty needy person, called today and asked me to come and get her. She's vomiting, running a fever, and is probably very contagious right now. She visited the hospital and they sent her home with antibiotics and told her that she had an intestinal flu that just needed to run its' course.

She begged me to come and get her to help her through the sickness; she lives alone. Myself, I don't like exposing others to flu viruses so I never ask anyone to come to my home, nor do I visit others....

I'm really feeling obligated to go over and bring her back to my home, as that's what she wants to do, and in doing so; it's going to drag her germs right in on top of my entire family.... inside our closed corridors. In helping her out, I'll probably end up getting myself and both kids sick as a result. Then I'll be out the money for the doctors and the antibiotics too.... X3 of us.

Sorry to rant a bit, and I know that I SHOULD feel good about being able to help someone else.... BUT, DAMN!!!!! Why DO I answer my phone at times???

I'm on my way to pick her up now.

Not only do I get to expose myself and family to the flu; I get to drive out a tank of gas to go get her so that I can expose myseft and my kids to the flu... Then, I'm sure that when I get sick, she'll be ready for me to take her back home.... and she'll expect me to drive her while I'm sick as a dog. She's like that! She doesn't drive, nor does she work.

Somebody say something to make me feel better about being the NICE SAP!!! I know a LOT of people that would tell her flat out no... some of my other family members already have.

I consider you a kind and giving person for helping her.

But I don't know of any healthy person who can't care for themselves when they have a normal case of the flu....

I don't know her situation.

But sometimes the right words are "I'm sorry, I can't expose my kids to this."

She might really be sick.

Don't forget tens of millions of people died of flu in the last century.

Feel better?

If you're careful about hygiene around her and resolutely minimize any exposure and contact you should probably be fine. Don't touch your face, particularly nose, mouth, or eyes until after you have thoroughly washed your hands (and I would wash my face, as well). You might even consider taking off all the clothes you were wearing and tying them up in a plastic bag until you can wash them (in hot water, of course).

Also, your main goal should be to make sure she's not dehydrating and has fluids and is drinking them. Sports drinks are one popular route for first aid rehydration -- and one's health can be SERIOUSLY impacted by the kind of rapid dehydration sometimes experienced with bad stomach flu. Make sure she's got some suitable food around. And then don't bog down in doing her chores for her, etc. That stuff can be let go for a few days.

Be a tough-minded big sis... don't be a too-selfless mom...

If you're going to whine about helping out your family, all I can say is:

Just wait till you don't have any left. It gets real lonely out here.

On the flip side, there is NO law that says you have to answer a ringing telephone.

I've had an answering machine on my home phone for 20 years and everyone I know fully understands that IF they want to get in touch with me, they better leave a message.

Pavlov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov) conditioned his dogs to respond to a ringing bell but that doesn't mean YOU have to....

Hey, Ani, you go ahead and whine to me... I've had emotionally needy friends and, love them though you may, they still can be enormously draining. We used to call them emotional vampires.

It may be paradoxical that they often bring out echoes of the same behavior in those they lean on, too. I know I've complained loads to others about my friends who are always complaining to me.

It's not something one necessarily catches in oneself straight off because after extended exposure to the relative or friend in question you become kind of desensitized -- and you have all that stored up kvetching to release that you haven't been able to get in edgewise.

Blowing off a little steam is a good thing and it will probably help you to get it out of your system now in the event your sister needs more help and is actually ill enough you don't want to open up on her -- like you know you really wanna...

Influenza, commonly known as "the flu," is a highly contagious viral infection of the respiratory tract. Although the flu affects both sexes and all age groups, kids tend to get it more often than adults. The illness even has its own season

i had the flu once. i say once because it is true. my whole life prior i had thought i had the flu at times, many times, but i was wrong. i probably had a cold instead.

i caught the flu from my grandmother who later died (not from the flu, but shortly after). i caught it from her from being in the same room in the hospital, in a anti viral gown/gloves/hat thingy. never touched anything, nurses made me wash mu hands/face before/after leaving.

a few days later i thought i was going to die, no kidding. literally thought i was going to die, not "oh wah i'm gonna die" but more like "ok dave, you had a good run but this is it. there is no way a person can live through this".

i lived however.

i ended up in the emergency room as the flu triggered my lungs to go into failure, they gave me a flu test, drugs for the flu, drugs made the situation wors - i ended up back in the emergency room worse than before - then there are parts i dont remember at all, like a few days worth.

i got better. it was hell, and i dont say that lightly - it was really bad.

now i get a flu shot every year, i'm on the top of the list before senior citizens, 'member when there where no flu shots? i got one first before anyone else. thats how BAD I AM health wise.

ani, AVOID THE FLU. bring her some chicken soup and sierra mist and STAY AWAY FROM HER.

seriously, seirra mist and soup is the only thing besides drugs that will help.

Go to her area, stop by the market and buy a container of fresh hot chicken soup, loads of canned soups, lunch meats and nice fresh sourdough bread with an upscale mustard or flavored mayo. Fresh OJ. Bring some DVDs, the latest book you loved, a nice get well card filled out with sincere concern, and some flowers. Ring the bell, hand her the works with a concerned smile and tell her you love her, tell you wish this visit could be under different circumstances and you truly wish you could come in but you've got your family to think of...

I wouldn't worry too much about contracting the flu from your sister. Chances are that you are being exposed everyday by any public person you come into contact with anyway, unless you have shut yourself off from the rest of the world.

Go get your sister. Help her through it. It's our punishment for not being an only child.

As an only child, I'm not sure that it's not without its own punishments.

I can't say I disagree with anything very much in any of these answers... though I think I would personally take the crapshoot of casual proximity to strangers who may have influenza over the very real case over at my sis's house. Which is not to say I wouldn't necessarily try the surgical strike care mission; get in, do what has to be done, and get out, following all the precautions oulined by all of us cautious types above, and maybe with the excellent apologia -- and little "lubrications" (card, etc) -- that Lee offered...

Caretakers are at risk, no way around it. Precautions, sure, but family is family. One little kiddo sneezing all over the grocery store is probably more likely to get you infected than one adult lady in your house I would think.

My wife is one of those ladies who does the hearing and vision tests for the kids at school. ALL DAY LONG, she's leaning over little eye-rubbing, nose-picking snifflers, dribblers, sneezers, coughers - holding their hands, helping them put the same headphones off and on, etc. Yeah, she gets sick a couple of times each school year but she survives just fine and that's about it. Her sister works in day care - talk about a bacteria/virus immersion bath.

Limits are smart and appropriate...but sometimes we worry too much about mixing it up with the great unwashed. Usually by the time we think about what we can do to protect ourselves, we've already been exposed.

Now if you or one of your family members is already weak in health especially lung trouble, then sure, batten down the hatches. But normally healthy people bumping around with other normally healthy people and sharing a few illnesses...it's a drag, but it's doable.

nat whilk ii

People who get exposed to germs often build up certain immunities. My mom is a nurse, she works at a community clinic and worked in a hospital for 25 years. Getting the flu is very rare for her.

Call her a cab.

Influenza is spread by aerosol means. You can be perfectly careful with your touch and washing, that will prevent transmitting a cold but not the flu. Coughing in an enclosed space is all it takes.

Terry D.

OK... Ani, your sister's a cab!

Thanks for all the replies guys. I went over to her place and spent the entire evening with her but I didn't bring her home to my place. My sister is a sincere hypochondriac, although she has had controlled diabetes since she was 15 years old; she's 51 now. The first thing I had her do was check her insulin levels and they were within normal range. She told me that her sugar level had been "though the roof" before I got there, but she also told me that she had been vomiting non-stop and she couldn't hold anything down.

I took a can of spray Lysol and a gallon of bleach to help sterilize things. She asked me if I could rinse out her vomit bucket and extended the bucket to me. I grabbed a handful of Kleenex's first and placed them over the part of the bucket that I held on to so that I didn't have to touch the surface. When I looked in the bucket, there was NO vomit, just spit. I have two children and, in the past, I've dealt with rounds of sickness where every one of my family had their face in a bucket. When such a viral is going around you can SMELL THE SICKNESS; especially if no one has cleaned the place. There was no indication that there had been any vomiting going on; nor was my sister feverish. Still, I cleaned the bucket with bleach, and then went around cleaning the obvious surfaces and then I sprayed the entire place heavily with Lysol after opening the place up and airing it out.

When I got there, the temperature seemed like it was about 140 degrees inside her apartment. It was horribly hot and humid and she was just wallowing in her own germs (whatever illness she might have had; flu or cold or whatever) Hell, the heat in itself would make a person feel ill and the moist and hot temp provided perfect breeding grounds for viral bacteria to multiply. I opened up her patio door and her bedroom window, while turning on her ceiling fan and placing a floor fan in the patio door to get the fresh air circulating; it was 74 degrees outside and a beautiful day. She didn't have any extra bedding that was of a cooler consistency, only winter blankets and quilts, so I told her that I would bring her a microfiber spread that would help her to stay cooler and also provide her a change of bedding so that she wasn't reinfecting herself with germs.

Anyway... the story continues to grow............

After I got her place cooled down to where it was comfortable inside, then she picked up her phone and began talking to several different (hypochondriac advisor) friends of hers. They were telling her that the hospital was WRONG for sending her home with antibiotics to recover. She was repeating what they were telling her so that she could get her directions straight as to what she needed to tell the hospital when she called them again so that they would admit her... She needs to lose some of her friends. By the time she got off of the phone from her friends, she had made up her mind that she wanted me to take her to the hospital. I told her that she needed to follow the advice of the first set of doctors and just take it easy, while making sure to take the antibiotics they prescribed. I told her that I didn't think that she needed to go back to the hospital because she had shown quite a bit of improvement from the time I got there to that time....

She was determined that she was going to go back to the hospital by 7:00 after getting all the lowdown from her friends, but she had SO MANY preparations to make before leaving.... (To her, hospitalization is no big deal because she's on Medicade and doesn't have to pay a dime out of her pocket for expenses; unlike some of us normal folks that pay insurance premiums and expensive copayments ) To me, if I'm sick enough to go to the hospital, I'm damn near on my death bed because I hate paying the medical bills afterwards.

She called Ask-a-Nurse and told the nurses all of the crazy things that her friends had told her to say and insisted that she was an insulin dependent diabetic whose sugar levels had been through the roof earlier that day; they were at 115 when she checked them in my presence. She told the nurse that she felt completely dehydrated because she hadn't been able to hold anything down and also that she had not been able to go urinate for a whole day. [Geez, it's called having a flu bug... things like that happen] She told the nurse that she hadn't eaten anything for two days... yet she had told me that her friend had brought her chicken noodle soup earlier that day that made her even sicker.

Anyway, by 7:30 she had received instructions from Ask-a-Nurse to go to the Emergency Room; at 10:00 she was still making preparations to go. She wanted to pack a bag (LUGGAGE) of things that she swore that she would have to have. It took her almost an hour to sort through the things she wanted to take. She wanted to take a shower. She wanted me to go through her refridgerator and dispose of anything perishable... She wanted to call all of her friends back to tell them that she was getting to go to the hospital... Whoopie, like she's a kid going to a freaking amusement park and she's planning to be gone a while.

Since I could see that nothing was going anywhere any too fast, I told her to get my oldest sister on the phone becuse I knew that it was late enough for the event to be over or close to being over... My oldest sister is the one that originally called me regarding the other sister's illness. She was really concerned and wanted to make sure that Linda had someone to watch over her, but she just couldn't break away from a church event that required her assistance as a server.... I had Linda ask Paula to meet us at the hospital because Paula doesn't work either, so she's not on a sleep schedule. I was already beginning to run into my sleep schedule, knowing that I had to get up at 4 am the next morning. Paula's first excuse for not being available was no longer convenient enough to avoid the involvement... unless she wanted to just tell Linda flat out no! If she had said no, I probably would not have got any sleep while spending the time to get Linda checked in at the hospital while they ran tests to determine whether or not they were going to admit her.

Wow, tough time, I'm glad you didn't take her home where your kids were. There's defintely something contagious going on there.

Oh yuh. If you don't want to answer your phone, here's something that might help....http://grandcentral.com/

Ani,

You have amazing patience. If I had a sister and she did that to me, I would have nothing further to do with her. Next time, tell her to call 911 and leave you alone.

Trust me, when she's on a roll, I avoid her calls like the plague. I will usually answer the calls from my oldest sister because she's pretty much the connecting pin of the entire outer family and calls with news of sicknesses or deaths in the external family. Rarely do I ever NOT answer her calls. Whenever Linda can't get in touch with me, she calls Paula and has Paula call me It's kind of a Catch 22. Paula ALWAYS seems to have an excuse as to why she can't be there for Linda, but when Paula needs someone, she's the first to call me or my brother who lives a couple of hours away. This time, however, I "RETURNED" the favor back to Paula by putting her on the spot and barracading her escape route.

I made sure that Linda was the one to ask Paula to come to the hospital because I didn't want to listen to her lame excuses. At first she told Linda that she was really, REALLY exhausted after having volunteered for the church, but I told Linda to tell Paula that I was at the tail end of working a 60 HOUR week... and I was already dog-assed tired when I got there with the obligation of getting up at 4:00 the next morning with at least another 10 hour day ahead of me.

Needless to say, I was a little past the point of diplomacy. I was ready to take her to the hospital at 7:30, and at that point I might have still felt a bit of sympathy for her. As it was... We didn't leave her place until AFTER 10:30 when I demanded that we leave NOW if I was going to be able to stay awake on the road. She had insisted that Paula leave the church A.S.A.P. and wait at the hospital for us to arrive. I had to remind her of how long it had been since she talked to Paula several times... from about 9:00 on.... and told her that Paula would be waiting in ER. Surely enough Paula had been waiting in ER for about 45 minutes when we finally arrived.

As of this morning.... this has turned into an etirely different spin of events...

Um.... yeah... I just got a call to come to the Hospital; they are running tests for cardiac. I guess they want to check ALL possibilities....

I just read your post after posting my last comment.... I think you understand the situation well. She's mentally touched.

A full day at the hospital.... I just got home.

She had told me that they were scheduling her for open-heart surgery. She was afraid and didn't feel that she needed open heart surgery because she wasn't feeling any chest pain or having any symptoms of a heart attack. I called the hospital before I left and told them that my sister wanted a second opinion prior to any major surgery.

At first the admin denied me any decision in the matter because I am not listed as a Power of Attorney for her. I asked them if my sister was coherent and explained to them that SHE didn't want the surgery if it was not necessary. I told them to consult directly with her if my input was not acceptable. When I got to the hospital they were in the process of the Andiogram (term???) procedure. I ask the man at the desk in the waiting room to let the surgeon and his staff to know that I was there.

After demanding the second opinion, amazingly the tests results came back negative and they did not find any blockage. When I questioned them about the high enzymes that were found that the nurses insisted was the foundation for scheduling the testing procedures and potential open heart surgery, the doctor said that influenza can elevate enzyme levels.

The medical facility is the American Heart Insititute of Learning.... had I ignored the call, chances are............... well, I feel better about having answered the call. Even if it was a major pain in the butt overall; I probably circumvented what could have been a LOT worse.