My mother actually got sick before the holidays, and luckily
she has since recovered. It was a nasty
little virus that caused her to cough and wheeze for weeks though.
My little man seems to have acquired the flu. I read that the flu shot, which he got 4-6
weeks ago, only covered 90% of the strains this year, and I really think he
ended up with one that was in that 10%.
It began Saturday night with a high fever, chills, complaints of pain in
his tummy and mouth (throat). The doctor
said our little monkey didn’t show signs of an ear infection, and he tested negative for
strep. The doctor was fairly certain a virus was at fault. He didn’t actually say it was the flu, but I
can’t imagine any other virus causing this much havoc.
As a parent, seeing your kids in pain is one of the worst
things to experience. Your child is like
a mini little extension of you—one that needs to be nurtured and cared for and
educated so that he or she may some day turn out, hopefully, twice the man or
woman that you are. You literally will do anything and everything
for your kids. But when they are sick,
it’s one of the most helpless feelings in the world.
For the past four days we’ve had to administer acetaminophen
and ibuprofen to keep his fever at bay, alternating back and forth. These two drugs are like a half a can of
Pepsi or Coke compared to a triple espresso or two cans of Red Bull. The acetaminophen does work, but it takes about
an hour to kick in and lasts only a few hours.
The ibuprofen kicks in within 15-20 minutes, and he would go about 5
hours before his fever came roaring back.
Unfortunately you can’t give ibuprofen over and over, I’m assuming due
to side effects.
When the medicine wears off, my son goes from a happy,
go-lucky kid to being ultra-sensitive and super clingy. He’s getting too big to pick up and carry
around, yet that’s all he wants. If you
tease him or try to make him laugh, he bursts into tears. He’s incredibly uncomfortable, and man does
it just tug at your heart-strings. I’d
gladly trade with him and take the virus from him if it were possible, because
seeing him that way is just awful.
He is doing better now.
He even made it through a full day of school. Some little guys and girls aren’t quite so
lucky. A coworker’s one grandchild has
been down for two weeks with this fever-causing bug. I can’t imagine!
But as easily susceptible as we are to tiny bacteria and
viruses, we really are strong creatures.
Unless we are older or very young or our immune systems are out of
whack, our bodies seem to overcome the invasion and we get better. We heal and live on to fight another day.
And for those of us who aren’t sick, we always try to help
out the others, don’t we? I personally
think caring for each other is an innate behavioral response. Some choose to ignore it, sure, but most of
us will lend a hand or care for those who are sick or hurting. Look at the public responses to Katrina and
Haiti and Sandy, and you can see that people REALLY DO CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER.
Sometimes our world seems full of doom and gloom. But for all the mass shootings and war crimes
and terrorism and everything else we hear about in the news every day, there
are hundreds of millions more acts of kindness and bravery that go
unnoticed. Doctors are treating sick
children in impoverished states.
Firefighters and police officers and Armed Services members are putting
their lives on the line every day to save lives and help those in need. Sometimes it seems that there’s an awful lot
of hate in the world, but maybe that’s because we all just haven’t opened our
eyes wide enough to notice and appreciate the good.
No comments:
Post a Comment