The Sick Child Rules

Now that I have been a mommy for over 4 years and have nursed my girl through many illnesses including the dreaded swine flu,  I am finally cluing into the unwritten rules of the sick child.

1.  Your child will always start feeling sick on a Friday afternoon.  And you won't think it's anything until 30 minutes after the Dr's office has closed for the whole weekend.  This means you spend all weekend trying to decide if it's severe enough for urgent care or waiting till Monday morning.

2.  If you do decide to take your child to urgent care, they will act less sick by half once you get there.

3.  If anyone in your household has something planned or are looking forward to something, your child will get sick.  Meaning you have to cancel your plans. 

4. The one time you don't pack Tylenol, Motrin and a thermometer on vacation is the one time your child will get sick.  Every other time you pack those things, they will just take up room in your suitcase.

 

Our usual arsenal

5. 95% of the time there is absolutely nothing the Dr can do for your sick child.  You take them in, hoping it's something bacterial so an antibiotic will help, but they just shake their heads and inform you it's a virus.   This only serves to make you feel more helpless in making your child feel better.  And you wasted money on the copay.


As you might have already guessed, Caro is sick this weekend.   It started last night (a Friday!- rule 1) about 4:30 when she complained that her "lungs hurt" while pointing down her throat.  Then she cried because we left her goldfish at a friend's house.  After those 2 things she acted fine until I checked on her at 11:30 as I was going to bed to find her burning up.

100.8°.   Lovely.

 Caro always seems to run fevers that are unresponsive to a single medicine.  So we usually need to alternate them every 3 hours which means very little sleep for mommy.  She's continued to run a fever most of the day if I'm not right on top of the medicine so we have snuggled on the couch and watched cartoons, played some princesses and taken a nap.  So far we've avoided urgent care because besides the fever, she's not acting horribly sick.  Not lethargic or listless (knock on wood.)  I really hope she feels better quickly.  I HATE it when she's sick, I get so anxious.  Illnesses are my biggest fear.

And I still haven't explained that she has to miss a birthday party tomorrow (see rule 3.)  She is going to be so sad