About an hour ago my three year old started complaining about his neck. "My neck is sore, mommy!" he said, "I think my neck is too sore to take a bath."
We happened to be in the bathroom (to take the aforesaid bath) at that moment so I handily whipped out the ear thermometer from the medicine box to check for a fever. Lo and behold... nada mucho. 99.1. Nothing to write home about, at least not yet.
Still, I'm edgy. I called the nurse at our pediatrician's office - an office that is now a 25 minute drive away, but probably worth sticking with because they offer evening hours until 8pm every day, Saturday hours until 5pm AND Sunday hours during flu season. I left one of the typical cheerfully paranoid messages for which I am probably famous around their office after bringing all three of my three children to them for every major illness over the past six years:
"Hi. This is ___________. I am calling about my son ______________, whose birthdate is June ___, 2007. Our phone number is ______________. The reason I'm calling is, well, my son has just started complaining about his neck hurting, and that worries me, because my husband and I know of someone here in San Diego that died of acute bacterial meningitis about a month ago. So I just wanted to ask what the symptoms of meningitis are and what to look out for. I mean, I'm not worried or anything. But I just want to be sure to ask. So that if he gets worse, I will know what to do. Thanks. His name is ______________ and you can reach us, again, at this number _______________."
I can literally picture the nurses standing around the office answering machine laughing and rolling their eyes in a good natured way. "There she goes again!" they say, "That poor woman really needs to relax! You'd think after three children, she'd chill out a little!"
I wish I could! I wish I could just escape to a tropical island with some delicious fruity and alcoholic beverage, a great book and maybe (if he's lucky!) my husband to lay next to me on the beach. We could just lounge there under the hot sun peacefully, enjoying the sound of waves crashing on the shore and birds faintly chirping. And nothing else. Not one other sound - especially not the frantic crying and whining I am listening to at this very moment as my husband gives the evening bath.
But I can't turn my back on my kids when they are sick, or at any other time. So it comes down to figuring out what "real" sickness looks like, and sometimes that is hard to do. Sometimes it seems worse than it really is, and other times it seems a lot better than it really is.
Once when my little son was 18 months old he developed a 104 degree fever that wouldn't break for two days and I raced him tearfully to the pediatrician to discover that he had a mild case of Hand-Foot-Mouth disease (Coxsackie virus) and that there was nothing we could do for it but give him popsicles until the virus passed.
Another time we waited a week to take our daughter to the doctor when she was running a 103.5 degree fever that went down with Tylenol but wouldn't seem to break - because we thought it was just a cold or flu that would pass, and she actually turned out to have a double ear infection and pneumonia! My sons have been tested for strep throat four times. Two times they actually had it... two times, they didn't.
Basically it never seems safe to assume anything about their health, positive or negative. You'd think after six years I'd know all of the signs to look for and have all of the acetaminophin dosages memorized by heart but I ask the same questions every time, because the idea of any of my little people being seriously ill terrifies me to the point that my IQ drops about 40 points every time I place a call to the after hours nurse.
I also often wonder why it is that my children typically manage to get sick on Friday evening anywhere between 9pm and 3am, rather than at some reasonable hour like say, noon. I guess this falls under the heading of Murphy's law but I'll be darned if it doesn't seem like my personal law by now.
My theorem would look something like, "If it seems to be the worst possible moment for a child to become ill, and if neither parent slept well last night, then YES, the child will be feverish and vomiting until morning ~ when they will likely make a miraculous recovery".
A dermatologist I once met told me that he and his wife were sick for the first eight years of their children's lives but after that developed fantastic immunity and never got sick again. That gives me hope - we've still got over two years to go to show that we can match their mettle! In the interim I'm working hard to build our immune systems with healthy food, and my family gets good sleep and good exercise but I can't claim to do either of the latter myself.
The telephone has yet to ring with a call from our nurse, but I think I'm off the hook for tonight. After being too sore to take a bath, my little son ate a large dinner and then told me that his neck was feeling much better and he thought it had just been "hungry". No fever combined with a healthy appetite and no other pains leads me to believe that maybe he just strained his neck somehow, possibly when he was riding his bike earlier in the afternoon.
According to Dr. Mommy, odds are 99% he's going to be just fine.
RX: Two hugs and three kisses and a lively bedtime story.
I'm still ready for that tropical vacation though. And as long as I'm dreaming, I'm going to throw in a beachside masseuse and a really sumptuous all day meal with lots of gorgeous courses and plenty of dessert, just for me. No-one ever gets a tummyache in paradise, right?
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