Sick

Not something that I have had in probably 35 years, but this week I was fortunate to end up with Pink Eye. None of my kids had it, but apparently with sinus infections this year, pink eye has been part of it.

Being sick is really hard, but being sick as a parent, in my opinion is even harder. Because, it isn’t just having to take care of yourself to get better, it is also having to take care of kids and making sure that they are ok.  I’m beyond grateful for our medical system that was able to help the process to get me better, not only from the pink eye, but also the sinus infection.

Here’s to hopefully having a restful weekend and getting better.

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Looks like, after a solid week of sick kids, one having surgery and just an all out crazy week of life, it looks like things are finally on the mends.

Life is crazy enough without the outside factors. Our lives are all busy and we are all trying to juggle, but part of the juggling requires downtime too. We can only go but so hard and so fast before we fail too.

I’m really grateful that we live in an area and have access to great medical care and that the medical professionals were able to help both of my sons this past week. And as the boys and I talk about our day and at least one, if not two bike rides today, I’m just really glad that both of them are on the mends.

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What a week this has been. Ups and Downs. Frustration and gratitude. This has truly been a week.

Both boys have been out of school and completely off their schedules. Boy A had a dental procedure yesterday, which required a trip to the hospital and to be placed under anesthia. As a parent, there is nothing more concerning or more frightening than seeing your child carted off by strangers and hoping and praying that everything goes well.

But it did. The Dr and nurses took great care of him and once he was awake, he was a happy little boy, sleepy, but happy. And for the first time that day, I was able to breathe easily.

Now, for Boy B. He was taken to the local urgent care on Saturday because of a high fever and white spots on his tonsils. He was diagnosed and treated for Strep Throat, which he has had several times already. But, a few days later of moderate fevers and fatigue, we took him into his pediatrician and they decided to run blood work for Mono. That’s right, Mono.

And, based on the call from his Dr yesterday, even though they were waiting on one more test to come back, he was 99% sure that he did in fact have Mono. Who knew that kids could get it? Well, apparently a lot of kids under the age of 5 do.

So, what a week. We have been dealing with the impending surgery for one and fighting fevers in the other. We are grateful for the Dr’s and nurses that have taken care of both of our kids and today, it seems that everyone is on the mends and making recoveries. Though, Boy B is taking a nap after being up for only an hour, but that is part of Mono.

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For the past 6 days, Boy B has been fighting a moderate fever. And by that, I mean it has ranged from 100 – 103 give or take. He has been really not had any other symptoms until Saturday, when we noticed that his tonsils were swollen.

He was seen at the local urgent care center and after a few dosages of medicine, he seemed to be on the mends, but at night, he would still break out into a fever of about 102. The strange thing, is that yesterday, he was fine, no fever, came home from school with a runny nose and congestion.

Not sure what is going on, but for whatever reason, he can’t fight off this fever. I just want my little buddy to feel better.

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It was bound to happen and yesterday morning around 3:00 a.m., I realized that I had had been living on borrowed time. Around 3:05 a.m. sitting in the reclined holding my son, because he had been coughing and was having a hard time sleeping, but it was then I realized that I couldn’t swallow and that I was 99% sure that I had STREP!

So, off to the Urgent Care Center I went yesterday morning, hardly able to talk, hardly able to swallow, no energy and beyond exhausted. I talked with the Dr, she looked in my throat and said “you’ve been living on borrowed time” and only echoed that same statement when she found out that I had not had strep in 30 years.

It is really hard being sick, it is hard being sick as an adult and I think that it is even harder being sick when you are a parent. Because, a parent still has to get things done and ensure that their children are taken care of and fed and bathed. Those things still have to be done.  Even though we might, as parents are living on borrowed time fighting off sickness and illness and finally get hit, we still have to get things done.

So today at work, I have little to no energy. My throat is still really swollen and it hurts to swallow. But, my kids are better and they went to school today and were happy to see their friends this morning and that is all that really matters.  And even though I ran out of time and finally got sick, it was still good to see how my kids have done the last few days and seeing them help out more around the house and have shown me a lot of compassion.

I am really proud of those little boys.

 

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Well, it appears that the boys have had a relapse with their strep. Yesterday, one of the boys was at the Dr and the other went to daycare, but came home not feeling well.

A friend of mine asked how hard it was on me as a parent to see my kids not feeling well and I really couldn’t put it into words. I know how I am when I don’t feel well and it is hard, but seeing your kids not feel well and not being able to really do anything, is just the worse feeling in the world. As a parent, it is our job to protect our kids and provide them with a safe and loving environment, but the reality is, they will get sick and they will get hurt.

A relapse to a sickness isn’t that uncommon, in fact, it happens more than we want to realize. But the reality of it is that our society is willing to take medicine because it is a quick fix, when in reality, there is a good chance that we are causing more harm than good to our bodies long term. And I am the worlds worse.  Since I was 5, I’ve had tubes in my ears, well as of January of 2016, 10 or 11 times in each ear. And when I get a sinus infection and I can usually tell pretty quickly, I’m at a urgent care center getting the three medications that I need. Should I wait? Maybe? But I don’t have time to wait!

Being a parent is a full time job, 24/7 365 days a year. But the reality is that parents, like kids, don’t have time to get sick and a relapse only slows things down that much more. But right now, in this moment, that even though it looks like a minor relapse for the boys, they are in relative terms, healthy. They aren’t in a Children’s Hospital. They are here with me. They are safe. They are getting better. They are my life and I will do everything that I can to protect and keep them safe and tonight and tonight, if they wake up, again at 3:00 a.m., I’ll take them downstairs and rock them and keep them comforted. Because, that is what a parent does when their child is sick.

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Traditions are made to be broken, started, altered and passed down. And this Christmas was definitely hit on all of those this year. And all of my best plans for Christmas Eve, failed quickly, but taught me a really valuable life lesson.

Growing up, Christmas Eve was my favorite day of the year. It represented a time of anticipation and innocence. Normally, I give my staff at work the day off and I man the office, but this year, I took the day off and planned on grabbing wings and a cold beverage, grabbing a few last minute things for my wife’s stocking and as a family, going to church and then getting baking cookies and putting out luminaries and watching It’s A Wonderful Life. Each of these things, minus going for wings and beer, were things that I did as a kid growing up and something that have and still mean the most to me about Christmas. But this year, things didn’t really work out like I had expected or even thought that it would.

On Christmas Eve eve, my wife was at work and called to say that she was going to the local urgent care and that she was pretty sure that she had strep throat. Great! Two years in a row of her being sick, last year was pink eye. BUT, that wasn’t the real concern, the real concern was the boys and it was quickly appearing that they too were sick with strep and that this was becoming a tradition of them being sick at Christmas.

So, my plans for Christmas Eve went from going out and having some downtime, to taking the boys to the urgent care center, only to have it confirmed that they too had strep throat. The problem, Boy B HATES medicine and oh right, he didn’t just have strep, he also had Scarlet Fever. After getting home and trying for a few hours to get medicine into Boy B, it was quickly apparent that he wasn’t going to take it. After a quick call with a friend of mine that is a Doctor, he advised us to take him to the ER and that Scarlet Fever wasn’t something to mess around with.

So, there goes my lunch of wings and a beer, shopping, and now Christmas Eve service, because my wife and son headed straight to the ER for our first ever visit. The medical staff was awesome! They not only took care of him immediately, got a dose of medicine, they were able to break his fever. And not only did they take care of him, the ER Doctor, took his hand and lead him down the hall to a toy closet, were he could pick out any toy that he wanted! How awesome is that (this will be a future blog story about the toy closet)! So what toy did he pick out? A Star Wars Storm Trooper helmet, not because he loves Star Wars, but because his brother does and he knew that his brother would want to help him color it.

RELIEF! He was on the mends.  Peace and a deep sigh of relief for a moment.

After a few hours in the ER, my wife and son arrive back home and within 30 minutes of being back he ate more in just those few minutes than he had in the previous 24 hours. He was back to being a little boy, that was smiling and excited at the arrival of Santa coming in a few hours. So, in a few hours before their bed, we still had time to bake and decorate cookies, we watched the Charlie Brown and then we put out cookies and Reindeer food. And as we were putting out the food for the reindeer, I remembered the luminaries.

Luminaries for me growing up, were the start of Christmas. I didn’t always have the best Christmas mornings, often time there was uncertainty if this was my families last Christmas together or if there was going to be a lot of arguing? But luminaries represented calm and peace in a sometimes difficult time in my life. And as I got the luminaries together to put out in front of the house, I had the boys to come over and I told them how this was one of the many traditions that I wanted to pass down to them and they really seemed to love the way that the luminaries lite up the walk way out front as a way to give Santa a landing strip for their house.

After the boys settled down for the night and Santa had come and gone, I realized that I was still able to keep some of my traditions and even pass some down to the boys. I was able to run out for a few minutes and get candy for my wife’s stocking and found her a few other little gifts. I was able to watch our Christmas Eve church service online (Love technology and that our church really leverages it and a cool way to stream church services) and I was able to have a glass of wine while wrapping gifts and watching It’s A Wonderful Life. But most importantly, my kids were feeling better and they got to for the first time, help me put out luminaries and got to see their expressions as I talked about the candles and how peaceful it was before Santa came.

Traditions are important. Traditions are made to be broken, expanded upon, altered, started and most importantly, passed down.  I most certainly hope that the tradition of being sick at Christmas is broken, but I really look forward to seeing how next years traditions grow and stick with the boys.

 

 

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Yesterday, for just an hour, I wasn’t connected to a phone or computer. For just an hour, I didn’t have to check email or text messages from the office.

For just an hour, I didn’t have to worry about life or think about life. But I did get to escape. I got to walk about from the distractions of life and clear my head.

Last night, I went to bed and knew that I was coming down with a sinus infection and I knew that I was more than likely going to be at home today with the boys, as one of them was not feeling well. And getting up this morning, I knew within 15 minutes what my day was going to look like and honestly, I wasn’t that far off.

Boy B has a cold. Boy A when told that he was going to daycare alone, freaked out. Could they both have gone to daycare, sure. I am just one that errors on the side of caution, especially with the holidays coming up.

Today consisted of the Boy B taking medicine for his cold (honey) and my trying to work and rest. Tonight, after my wife got home, I cooked dinner and got everyone ready for bed. Sure, I still have a sore throat and my ears are clogged up, but my kids don’t care. I mean, they do, but they still need guidance in getting them ready for bed.

But as I was rocking the boys to sleep, I thought back to yesterday and in how an hour, changed my outlook of the day. And today, I missed not having an hour alone without interruption, but the realty is that the boys will only be this age for a little long and at some point, they will not want to spend the day with me. They will not want to sit in my lap.

And in that moment, I wanted just an hour from today, to stand still in time.

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In the last 24 hours, the following events have occurred:

1) my wife fell down the last two steps in our house and sprain her ankle.
2) my oldest got sick at 3 a.m.
3) my youngest got diarrhea
4) my youngest on one of his bathroom trips decided to take an entire roll of toilet paper in the toilet and mind you, we only have one toilet in our house.
5) it took over 2 1/2 hours to unstop the toilet.
6) it is snowing and that is on top of ice that is already on the ground.
7) now the oldest has diarrhea.
8) and I really need a nap.

The last 24 hours have been beyond stressful. My wife getting hurt, of course happened when I was an hour out of town and on my way to a out of state meeting. So we had to get help from wife’s father’s girlfriend who just so happened to be in town. But I learned a few things about life and about myself over the course of the last 24 hours.

1) A dishwasher tablet can dissolve the toilet paper enough to flush it, but it took me over 2 hours to get this dissolve.  This article was a life saver at 4 a.m.

2) I got really frustrated about the toilet and I remembered the time when I wrecked my jeep and had to call my dad. I was scared to death at how angry he was going to be. And when my father got to me, he put his arm around me and very quietly said, “This too can be fixed.”

3) Life is hard, but there are always people that have it just a little bit harder and this was a reminder of that.

So in summary, the last 24 hours have not been fun, but in comparison to many, the last 24 hours have not been that bad.

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Usually when you think of soon to be 4 year old boys and you use the phrase, that smell, you think of something completely different and usually you hear giggles after hearing it too.  But last night was not the case, because when I walked into the boys room, that smell that hit me, I knew immediately, someone got sick.

I think that our house got hit with a small stomach bug, because one of the boys got sick on Saturday night, my other son got sick on Sunday night and my wife got sick this morning. But what is odd, is that smell of the boys getting sick, did not bother me. And I always remember my mom telling me, that when it is your own kid, the smell, the grossness, etc. just doesn’t matter, you work past it.  And maybe my mom was right?

But that smell did hit me as I was cleaning sheets and clothes at 1 a.m. this morning and though it wasn’t a great smell, I was able to get my son out of bed, cleaned and redressed without him really waking up.

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