SicknessUpdate
It’s autumn. The weather is changing. The leaves are falling. The airways are filling with mucus.
The family is sick. Mommy’s illness peaked a few days ago with a fever and aches. She plugged through her workdays until she reached a couple days off at midweek. After spending those off days sleeping in and napping more than the kids, she’s rejuvenated and ready to return to the soul-crushing grind of the gainfully employed.
I’ve been dealing with a slow march of random symptoms. Yesterday my nose was running. Today I have a cough. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll have morning sickness with a touch of gout. I don’t have anything major enough to slow me down or even convince me to go to sleep at a decent hour; I just keep plugging away at parenting keeping the children close and a box of tissues closer.
Abbie has been snotty for most of this week, and I’m not just referring to her attitude.* The neon green snot streamers have flowed from her nose for a few days now. I checked her preschool handbook for guidelines on when to keep children home from school. If they have a fever, nausea, diarrhea, some highly contagious disease like pinkeye, or generally feel rotten we should keep them home. Since Abbie didn’t seem highly contagious and her spirit was no more rotten than usual, I sent her to school this week. We both could benefit from a day of her learning outside the house. Plus I figured she probably picked up her bug at preschool anyway.
The boys are probably/hopefully moving into the latter stages of their illness. It started in their noses with a lot of sneezing and snotting. The snot has slowed to lo-flo status out their noses, but it’s now probably draining down the back of their throats. The result is a nasty cough that’s threatening to turn into a bark.
Mommy listened to the boys’ lungs and pronounced them healthy.** This eliminated any of the nastier childhood diseases and sent us into a waiting game until their sinuses cleared. There’s little else we can do besides give them medicines that don’t really do anything besides make the parents feel better.
We’ve debated hard to determine which useless medicine to give them. We originally settled on diphenhydramine to help us feel like we’re helping clear their sinuses. Diphenhydramine doesn’t even claim to help a cough, though, so we found a cough suppressant to help quiet them. Hopefully it’ll help their cough so they can sleep better. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll sleep better feeling like I did something to help them.
* This is the 25th time I’ve used that line in this blog. I feel like one of those many onlookers who see me in public with three small children and, feeling compelled to say something but unsure of what exactly to say, tells me “you’ve got your hands full.”
** A couple of mommy’s advantages are a) she has a stethoscope, and b) she knows how to use it.
The family is sick. Mommy’s illness peaked a few days ago with a fever and aches. She plugged through her workdays until she reached a couple days off at midweek. After spending those off days sleeping in and napping more than the kids, she’s rejuvenated and ready to return to the soul-crushing grind of the gainfully employed.
I’ve been dealing with a slow march of random symptoms. Yesterday my nose was running. Today I have a cough. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll have morning sickness with a touch of gout. I don’t have anything major enough to slow me down or even convince me to go to sleep at a decent hour; I just keep plugging away at parenting keeping the children close and a box of tissues closer.
Abbie has been snotty for most of this week, and I’m not just referring to her attitude.* The neon green snot streamers have flowed from her nose for a few days now. I checked her preschool handbook for guidelines on when to keep children home from school. If they have a fever, nausea, diarrhea, some highly contagious disease like pinkeye, or generally feel rotten we should keep them home. Since Abbie didn’t seem highly contagious and her spirit was no more rotten than usual, I sent her to school this week. We both could benefit from a day of her learning outside the house. Plus I figured she probably picked up her bug at preschool anyway.
The boys are probably/hopefully moving into the latter stages of their illness. It started in their noses with a lot of sneezing and snotting. The snot has slowed to lo-flo status out their noses, but it’s now probably draining down the back of their throats. The result is a nasty cough that’s threatening to turn into a bark.
Mommy listened to the boys’ lungs and pronounced them healthy.** This eliminated any of the nastier childhood diseases and sent us into a waiting game until their sinuses cleared. There’s little else we can do besides give them medicines that don’t really do anything besides make the parents feel better.
We’ve debated hard to determine which useless medicine to give them. We originally settled on diphenhydramine to help us feel like we’re helping clear their sinuses. Diphenhydramine doesn’t even claim to help a cough, though, so we found a cough suppressant to help quiet them. Hopefully it’ll help their cough so they can sleep better. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll sleep better feeling like I did something to help them.
* This is the 25th time I’ve used that line in this blog. I feel like one of those many onlookers who see me in public with three small children and, feeling compelled to say something but unsure of what exactly to say, tells me “you’ve got your hands full.”
** A couple of mommy’s advantages are a) she has a stethoscope, and b) she knows how to use it.
posted by Matt at
11:55 PM
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