Sick Kids

February 7, 2013

It’s the season of the plagues in the petrie dish otherwise known as school. 

We managed to get through the Christmas holidays unscathed, but a couple of those nasty viruses followed my kids home this week. They have both spent the last two days on the couch. Clancy had an inflamed enormous terribly sore tonsil - antibiotics, better the next day. Jack however - I don’t know what he’s got.

He never gets sick and I attribute that to his disdain for drugs. Right from the start he refused to buy in - gripe water, baby Tylenol, antibiotics, anything in a dropper he pushed away, leaving him only his own defenses with which to fight. And now the kid has Keith Richard's immune system.

His sister, however, is a Valley of the Dolls* kind gal. Once that pink baby tongue of hers got its first slurp on the eye dropper that was it. She’s been lickin’ them clean and jonesing for more ever since. So, of course, if there is something going around it usually finds her. 

While Clancy was tripping on meds listing to Grace Slick*, her brother has been fighting things off with his ferocious fevers, strong sweats and bodacious barfing. The layers of defences in our immune systems are a marvel of human nature. Nodes and fevers, warriors they are. Hot, mean germ killers. Had Clancy been the second kid her fevers too would be the stuff of lore. 

First time parenting...ah, if only I could have a redo on the first one.

Anyway, Jack-who-is-never-sick has woken up the last two mornings with a huge headache. I can tell it really hurts, he has Headache Face. With the head pain he also has a raging fever. He asked for pills - asked for them! So I chopped Advils into tiny pieces (Holy smokes do those suckers fly if you tweak ‘em just so. Damn near killed the cat with one.) and he managed to swallow them but it was a bit of a gong show, the kid has had no pill practice. 

Within a half hour he was pain-free and fever-free but still not himself and then both nights the fevers and pain came back. I don’t think it’s anything serious, I think it’s Jack’s way of fighting something off. Besides, headaches are a symptom of so many things that without a sore ear, raw throat or runny nose what would a doctor tell us? That said, if it starts all over again in the morning I will take him in and see what's what.

When I was pregnant I worried about a lot of things: How could I possibly help them with math? What if I don’t like them? What if they don’t like me? What if I misplaced them? Near the top of the list was headaches - having been a migraine sufferer all my life I can tell you that I pray that neither of them inherits this misery. 

There are so many ways I can consiously screw them up, it's no fun if I simply pass it on.

For the younger-than-me moms

* Valley of the Dolls

* Grace Slick