Monday - Liza gets her first case of croup. Mild, but still bad enough that she startles herself awake every time she coughs, screaming bloody murder, which doesn't help the barking noise coming out of her throat. It literally took me 45 minutes to calm her down enough after nap to get her to drink apple juice, which normally she will knock old ladies and kittens out of the way to get. Other than the horrible barking cough and an almost laughably quick falling asleep at nap and bedtime, she was fine.
Tuesday - Croup cough is replaced with an almost-normal cough, which is sporadic and seems to get much better with steam, so it's "let's take an hour-long bath at 10am" day. She's pretty chipper all day, right up until bedtime, when her nose starts to run. Every time she sneezes, she wakes herself up wailing, and we have to go in and wipe her off and calm her down, only to have her sneeze 10 minutes later and have to repeat the whole procedure. After like the fourth episode of this, which was punctuated by screams of "I want to sleep in Mom's bed!" and "I need a kleenex!" we gave in and brought her to bed with us. She settled right down, which is unusual for her, and proceded to start radiating heat like a freakin' furnace. I don't think she had a temperature - it's just that she's normally so hot when she sleeps that she wakes up drenched in sweat a couple times a week. The 400-degree child insisted in remaining in bodily contact with me at all times, preferably with hundreds of square inches of body involved, and she had really bad cold breath. She slept like a log, but I'm not sure whether Jason or I got more than an hour or two of sleep, what with all the shoving her over, taking off bedclothes, shoving her over, taking off pajamas, shoving her over, etc. At least she had the decency to go back to sleep after Jason got up this morning.
Wednesday - all snot, all the time. I mean, ginormous quantities of snot. Now, I'm used to runny noses, I'm even inured to the occasional snot bubble ... but I've never seen a kid so comprehensively snotty that when they sneeze, they get a foot-long souvenir hanging down their face and onto their pajamas. Every. Time. She. Sneezes. I have no idea where it's all coming from - maybe some hidden snot fountain down in her leg or something? I swear, it's like a bad special effect in an even worse gross-out movie.
And Benadryl doesn't do jack against whatever this is.
At least she can tell when she's going to sneeze, so we're working on the whole "sneeze into a kleenex or I will beat you like a government mule" training, but so far we've only made it to "Mom! Moooooooooom! I need a Bless You! I'm going to Bless You!" at which point I back away and dive for the tissue box so I'm prepared to clean up the aftermath. I had her hair pulled back in a ponytail all morning, but I know she's going to wake up from her nap with a 1/4" thick layer of crusty hair on at least one cheek, which I will have to soak off while she writhes around and screams and claws at my face with her razor-sharp, virus-encrusted fingernails.
I have washed my hands approximately 400,032 times so far today, and I'm still spreading virus on every surface I touch. There is literally no way to keep up with it - I mean, I had to wipe her nose 8 times WHILE I FIXED LUNCH (I counted). It's just not feasible to wash my hands that often and still expect to have any skin attached at the end of the day. And she can wipe her nose occasionally, but it ends up smeared all across her face, and that's just a case of chapped skin followed by impetigo waiting to happen, and I really don't want to deal with that, because speaking from years of childhood experience, that shit hurts.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go douse my sheets with bleach, soak myself in Lysol, and suck down as many Crystal Light Immunity Defense drinks as I can manage between now and 3:30. And take a nap - I couldn't even get in a catnap during the 14 videos we've watched today because I had to wipe her nose every 48 seconds.
Edited at 2:13pm to add: Great. She made it for almost an hour before she woke up screaming in a pool of her own snot. Gotta go back in there - again - and bail her out. My crystal ball says we'll be ordering takeout tonight ...
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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4 comments:
Thus, the advantage of being able to drop a child at daycare.
We've spent the weekend with "stomach sensitivities". The 4 month old (oh, where does the hyphen go in 4 month-old? 4-month old? Or does this not get a hyphen?) has been sharing projectile vomit whenever she eats. But there is a delay. You think that she's fine. You think that she's taking it. You wait with the cloth by her chin for 10 minutes. Nothing. At the 11 minute mark, then out it comes. Everywhere. We're running out of sheets for the crib. I'm running low on shirts.
We took her to the doctor Tuesday morning. She had been vomiting since Friday, but the doctor is not open on weekends. The doctor is not open on holiday Monday. Thus, we seem him on Tuesday. Magically, on Monday night the infant stops vomiting. The appointment on Tuesday shows that she has lost 10% of her weight. But, since she's not vomiting, all we can do is just make certain that she eats. Otherwise, we need to send her to the hospital for an I.V.
If the infant feels poorly, then the infant doesn't really want to eat. But she really needs to eat. But she won't eat; she won't nurse. But she must eat or get taken to the hospital. We must make her eat.
She might not eat, but she WILL swallow. We can open her mouth and poor Pedialite into her mouth. She will swallow when presented with the option of choking versus swallow. Yes, I am "water boarding" my infant.
She is swallowing and not vomiting. She will recover - I'm not certain that I will.
My rugrat was sick yesterday too, although she's ten, and can wipe her own nose and take her own bath.
However, we're remodelling her bedroom, and she's been sleeping on the couch all week, so yesterday I put her in my bed, 'cause it was either that or the kid wouldn't sleep 'cause anytime I did anything, I'd have to walk past her on the couch.
So now I'm gonna get it too. And I can't even take anything for it right now.
Sigh. We weren't able to sufficiently "water board" the infant. We had to spend the last three days in the hospital with an I.V. sticking out of her head. Yes, out of her head. They couldn't find the vein in her arm, so they used the vein in her temple.
We're home now. The virus is fading, but her weight is not yet returning. She's still down 10%. (Why can't I lose 10% of MY weight and be able to keep it off?) She's not hungry and it is hard to force an infant to eat. But we're doing it. Sigh.
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