Yes – I will say it bolding and with conviction – I HATE February!

It is not because I miss the Christmas season. Not because I failed with my New Year’s resolutions. Here is why I do not enjoy this month-

• Snow is fun as a kid and I enjoyed snow days back then. I don’t even mind shoveling my driveway. But when you see a huge snow drift at the end of your driveway and the plow has not come and you have to get to work, it can be difficult.
• Treadmill running. I can’t run now since my knee injury, but when I did run we had to do running on the treadmill. BORING.
•  The year was 2001-  I had my first miscarriage in February. Right after the big V day. That month really sucked. I still think about that loss.
• I go to bed early in February. I am exhausted. But I tend to wake up a lot in the middle of the night and my mind wanders. I think a lot about Nolan and cry.
•  You wake up and it is dark, you leave work and it is dark. I have no windows in my workplace.
• More days than not the sun is no where to be found. I wonder if it left the Midwest and headed to Florida permanently.  If we have 14 consecutive cloudy days in February I am gloomy.
• But even if it was sunny outside, February for a pediatrician has an evil 3 letter word-

RSV

RSV is respiratory syncytial virus – and it can make babies/infants/young kids very ill. Some years it is average in attack – but other years, like this one – UGH! It is bad.

In February our office can be a war zone with the amount of kids sick with RSV, influenza, para-influenza, enterovirus, rhinovirus, and don’t forget norovirus and other bugs that cause diarrhea, ear infections and pneumonia. Non-stop some days.

1996 in Phoenix was my last year of residency. We had the worst RSV season ever. It was my PICU rotation month that February. Almost every day an infant would be brought to the ER early in the morning in respiratory failure from the virus. Or they would just stop breathing. Almost every day a baby died from RSV or some other respiratory virus.

So I will cross off each day of February on my countdown to spring. I guess my sick-filled work days sometimes make the time go fast, but then I get up and do it all over again.