sicker than a dog

For the last couple of weeks I've felt cruddy. Not really anything I could put my finger on. First I had a headache for like 10 days straight. Then I had a sore throat. I attributed a lot of it to being depressed about going back to work. Then on Sunday night, Renee woke up around 4AM and when I went to get out of bed I felt like I had been run over by a truck. I had the chills, felt nauseous and terrible all around. Rather than fighting her to go back to bed without eating, I fed her and took my temperature. 100.4. Not bad. I went back to bed. I was shivering compulsively when I got back in bed and lay there moaning, wondering how I was going to afford being sick. I used all of my sick time for my maternity leave and any time I have now I want to spend with Renee...not in bed sick. I couldn't sleep. The alarm went off. Ski rolled over and looked at me. I think his exact words were "you look terrible." I took my temperature again. 101.3. Hmmm. We decided that I had no choice but to stay home and get some sleep as Renee has been going through a phase where she wants her mom and her mom only and me being out of commission really isn't an option. I took some tylenol, called in to work, cried a while about sending my kid to daycare when I was going to be home all day and finally went back to sleep. Woke up around 10AM, felt a little better and decided that I was either picking up Renee or going to work. Work is easier so to work I went. When I got there, I googled "breastfeed flu" to find out if my illness would have any impact on the baby and the first link that came up was about Mastitis. A light bulb went on. I had been having a lot of pain on my right side while nursing for a few weeks but when I made the committment to myself to breastfeed Renee, I figured there was going to be a lot of "grin and bear it" moments and I did just that. Ignore it and it will go away. Apparently not. Apparently ignoring it spreads the infection and you end up feeling sicker than a dog.