Sick

There is nothing worse than when the kids are sick. Ok, in my case, it is just one kid, but it is still not fun, especially when they are throwing up.

Adults can understand or rationalize getting sick, because at some point in our lives, either due to a bug or self inducing (drinking) we have thrown up. But for kids, their experience with this isn’t as great and there is a level of fear there. What is wrong? Why am I throwing up? All great questions, just not one I am prepared to answer while their heads are in the toilet.

Getting sick is part of life, it happens. It is not a fun thing to deal with, but we all have to at some point. The one  frustrating thing this morning was that my son kept screaming before he threw up. Now, I can not imagine that it felt good to throw up or that it felt good to scream before doing so.

As adults, we can take care of ourselves, for the most part, but kids, it has to be a very scary feeling. As parents, we do have to remind ourselves that they are scared and need to be comforted and reassured. Watching your child when they are sick is hard, because you are limited in what you can do for them.

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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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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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For the last 10 Days, my wife has been sick with an upper respiratory infection and for the last 7 days, I’ve been dealing with the same thing. It has really been hard on our family, because we still had to take care of our kids, while trying to get better.

I like to believe that any situation that we are faced, both if it is something good or a challenge like being sick, that my wife and I can learn from it so that the next time, we are able to handle it even better. Because there will be a next time.

The things that we did well:

  • We communicated a lot when I was at work & if I needed to come home early or pick up the kids from daycare.
  • We took turns putting the boys to bed. This allowed for at least one to get an earlier start to resting.

The things that we didn’t do as well:

  • We got short with each other, which is understandable because we were sick and didn’t have the patience.
  • We didn’t ask for help as quickly when we needed it.

10 days being sick is a long time. And it is especially harder when you are sick with children. But one thing that we both learned, is that we were able to come through it, the boys were ok, I’m all but over mine and my wife is getting there.

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Ever have one of those moments as a parent that you just know, you really should go ahead and clear your calendar for the next day, because your child is going to be sick?  Well, that happened to me last night and this afternoon.

Last night Baby A started coughing, granted I was watching the Elections and my wife was taking care of the kids, but I could just tell by his coughing, that not only would he be up later that night, but that I would be taking today off to be with him. Sure enough, I went upstairs after midnight, most races had been called or at least there was a good idea of the direction that they were heading in and there laid Baby A, in my spot. He had a fever. A fever = no daycare.

Before I had gone upstairs, I quickly looked at my calendar for today, realized that I could move things around, work a little from home and take care of him, as my wife was on call. But all I could think of was that sometimes a being sick gets in the way. It wasn’t like he intended to be sick and it wasn’t like last month my wife planned to be on call today when he was sick. It is what it is. It is life. It is part of being a parent. And yes, I am fortunate enough to have understanding bosses and more importantly, an even better staff that can handle things while I’m out.

Throughout the day, I talked off and on with my mom, describing Baby A’s symptoms, coughing (he was diagnosed with Croup last year) and a low grade fever. And I was telling her how he was eating and drinking plenty of fluids and playing, but that he was still warm.  And then she started asking questions about his demeanor and symptoms and I said yes to everything she asked only to find out at the end, he is going through the same thing that I did at his age and there wasn’t anything that I could do about it, other than get the fever down and put him in the shower and get some steam into his lungs. And my mom said simply, sometimes in life, “being sick gets in the way.”

Life is hard, we have busy schedules and things that we want to do. But in life, sometimes being sick gets in the way. Kids don’t choose to get sick. They don’t want to feel bad. They don’t want to miss out with what is going on at school or sports, but it happens. And as much as of inconvenience that was to rearrange my day today and now also for tomorrow too, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Words that I hate saying more than anything else. Baby A woke up throwing up and Mommy had him uncontrolled. I made it 15 minutes into my commute when I got the text message, “Mommy is sick, please come back home.”

Turn around. Was able to get all of my meetings rescheduled and started sending emails to staff that I would be out of the office today. Got my wife to bed. Started getting the boys ready, changed, and then Baby A threw up all over me. And in that moment, he looks at me and apologizes and says that he is sorry that his tummy doesn’t feel good. Bless his heart.

I got him cleaned and changed, unloaded the diswasher and then reloaded it again. This could be a really long day, I hate it when Mommy is sick.

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The words that no parent ever wants to hear from their child’s Doctor. But those are the words I heard the other morning.  Baby A has been having a pretty rough time lately with a really bad cold. But he started getting better and then literally overnight, he was coughing and the coughing turned to croup.  The cough didn’t get any better after a day or two so we called the Pediatrician to have him checked out, because his breathing was a little different this time. He was still playing, eating and acting like himself for the most part, but this time, he sounded like Darth Vadar when he breathed.

The Doctor and I were talking and she very calmly told me, that Baby A as expected had the Croup cough, but that he also had Stridor, which is something that I had never heard of. I give the Doctor a lot of credit, I guess she saw a little bit of panic in my face and she basically explained the treatment, which was a steriod and if that did not resolve the problem, that we would need to goto the ER for breathing treatments. But, she suggested that we drive with the windows down on the drive home and then also going to the playground, because with it being a chilly day, the cold air will help with his breathing.

So, that is what we did. Got the prescription field, drove home with the windows down and then after his nap, we went to the playground. It was cold running after he and his brother, but it helped. We did not have to goto the ER, this time at least. And I’m sure that at some point, we will, but we were at least able to avoid it for the time being him.

We are almost a week into the cold, again, and I think that we are getting over the hump of the cold. Or I hope at least. But, I will say two things: 1) I hope that you have a great Pediatrician that you trust and that is available, even on the weekends and 2) please look for the signs for Croup and Stridor. Though not super dangerous, from what I’ve read, the Stridor portion can be if not monitored. And even though I love Star Wars, I can’t imagine talking like Darth Vadar is a fun thing.

 

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