For the last three days or so, my son has been sicker than he has ever been in his short life. The picture above was from the first night of his three day sickness. He was up late at night because he was coughing so much. I just HATE when my kids are sick. I'm not a doctor, and I don't even play one on TV, so I feel helpless when they are sick. I just want to take the sickness from them and take it for myself. I'm sure most parents feel the exact same way, it's the parenting instinct. I just feel so helpless.
The worst part.
Denny isn't talking 100% yet so what makes this really hard is that he's not able to tell me exactly what it is that's bothering him. He's getting better, every day he seems to make improvements and add new words to his vocabulary, but you still kind of have to speak Denny language to get what he is saying. So because of that I feel really helpless. It started with a really bad cough that kept him up Monday night. He sounded like a seal. Well, I had him in the ER about this time last year with Croup, so I thought it was probably something similar if not Croup again. On Tuesday I took him into a Quick Care facility because the cough wasn't getting any better. The gave him a liquid steroid and sent us home. He seemed to be better on Wednesday, but started to take a turn after dinner that night. About an hour after we put the kids to bed we heard Denny upstairs coughing, but it sounded funny so my wife went up to check on him. She called out to me to come help because he had puked all over his bed! Awesome! While cleaning him up Stacy felt his head and thought he felt really warm. So, I put him in a luke warm bath to clean him up and hopefully cool off any fever he may have. It didn't work. His temp was 103, so at about 10:30pm I loaded him up in the van and took him to the ER. Being sick and throwing up is one thing, but a fever scares the piss out of me. So, I took him to someplace where I thought we could get this thing under control.
I was a bit let down.
While Denny and I were in the ER, the service was great and they took great care of my little boy. I just felt a little disappointed in the course of treatment. They took his vitals, looked in his throat, and that's about it. They gave him some Tylenol to help with his fever and let us sit in a room. At about 2am the nurse came in to take his temp. The poor kid wouldn't go to sleep until just before then. He wanted to, but he wouldn't take his eyes off of me. I think he was afraid that if he fell asleep, I wouldn't be there when he woke up. Well, he must not have realized that his Daddy wasn't going anywhere besides right next to him! Well, he had finally fallen asleep about 1:45 and fifteen minutes later this nurse come in to see how he's doing. Because of the way he was laying the nurse couldn't get his temp using his under arm. So, you can see where this is going right? He lubed up a thermometer and shoved it up his butt. I was going to say no because I KNOW I wouldn't want to be woke up like that, but I realized it was in his best interest to have his temp checked. The temp had lowered to 100, so we were being sent home. Now, I don't know if there was something else dramatic going on in the ER that night, but about an hour and a half later the doctor came in to give me a script for Denny and tell me to keep an eye on him. He diagnosed him with a fancy word that means "sore throat" and sent us on our way. I didn't realize a sore throat could make you puke all over the place! Anyway, it was about 4am when he and I finally laid down for the night on our pull out couch. So needless to say, Thursday was a long day. He didn't feel well all day, and puked again that evening. I was a little let down that it took that long for them to diagnose a sore throat and discharge us.
Denny has slept A LOT over the last couple of days, and I'm happy to report that he is feeling much better now. He has kept food down, and has gotten back to his usual chaotic ways. He is still coughing this horrible sounding cough every know and then, but I'm hoping the antibiotic will help with that. I just wish I could take this sickness, and every other one either of my kids ever get, and have it for myself. I'm not selfish, I just don't want my kids to be sick. I've had poor health a lot in my life and I don't want my kids to have to deal with that.
I know I'm not alone in this thinking, but is there a time when you felt completely helpless when it came to your kids health? I'd love to hear how you dealt with it because I'm having a really hard time with this. Denny has wanted to be in my arms most of the last few days, and that's really cool(it's kind of upset my wife for obvious reasons, sorry Babe) but, I'd rather he be like that when he's healthy.
I hope your kids get through this flu season unscathed. Have a great weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment