I wanted to make a plot of the sickness in our lives… and after three hours of Python I have this post to show for it. I clearly have problems (and better ways to spend my time).

In any case, the first graph here shows me and my wife’s health in 2013. Pretty regular adult health time series — on average about two illnesses a year that we quickly bounced back from.

On the next chart I show our health in 2014. The first thing to note is the overall 40% reduction in health. This is mainly due to do sleep deprivation but lack of exercise is another factor at play here. In any case, that new baseline held for awhile until a distinct regime change around August 1st. At that point we have been experiencing a monthly pattern of cyclical illnesses phased by 1 week between us. It takes longer to return from these illnesses as well — mainly because of the sleep deprivation I think. These dynamics seems strange until you look at the next plot that overlays Anoushka’s health.

She is the exogenous variable in our family’s highly coupled health system. Actually the real forcing function here is her daycare which, in addition to providing great supervision, serves as a cesspool of disease. Now there is basically about 1 week/month that all three of us our healthy before the cycle begins again. And I know more about weird diseases like viral exanthem and roseola than I ever wanted to know. These are the joys of parenthood.

The weird part is that her cuteness still makes up for it all.