Two and a half hours later I'm standing in front of the school, finishing up a call with my mom, when another mom comes out of the school, "Your little girl has a fever," she says. I hang up with my mom and open the school door to find Claire in the arms of the school's director, sobbing. Claire was sobbing, that is. The director was fine. "We would've called you, but we just took her temp 10 minutes ago, and we knew you were on your way. It's 102," she said, "She says her tummy hurts."
I felt like the worst mom! They dismissed Mary Grace from her class and I hustled everyone home. Claire spit up, and I'm still not sure if it was vomit or just snot. She had this wet, rattling cough. She cried a lot until I got some Tylenol into her. Once the fever came down she perked up quite a bit. She even ate some noodles and drank some tea.
So I called the doctor's office to get the dose for Children's Dimetapp (because EVERYTHING says "under 6 years - do not use!" now, which is SO ANNOYING). The doctor's office recommended that I use Children's Robitussin instead. I had adult Robitussin DM, but not Children's Robitussin without letters, so I sent BJ to the store (hooray for Daddy's office being 10 minutes from home!). Turns out that both are 100 mg per teaspoon of Guaifensin. *sigh* The DM means it also has some other unspellable stuff in it - dextromethospanaquawarble... maybe that's what's bad for little kids.
The nurse told me to only give her 1/4 - 1/2 tsp, and to beware - it would knock her out.
"You say that like it's a bad thing," I said.
I'm going to start writing my speech for Mother of the Year now.
4 comments:
I always have the same reaction - "how is a sleepy kid a bad thing?" :)
I can do you one better - Cass has been fighting a cold for 4-5 days. Sunday she was a bit lethargic (and - again - this is bad?) and Monday was worse. Took her to the doctor yesterday. She has a sinus infection so potent it perforated both of her eardrums and there was pus everywhere. The mommy guilt is so thick I can cut it with a knife. She's been on augmentin for 24 hrs. and is back to her normal self. Sigh.
Oh jeez, Heidi! Hope she gets better soon!!!
The doctor's office asked me if I wanted to bring her in, and I said, "I would, if it weren't for all the times I've paid $25 to hear, 'it's a virus, keep doing what you're doing...'" so I'm sure Claire has the plague or something too. Murphy's law of sick children - it's a virus when you take them to the doctor, and it needs antibiotics when you don't.
Just remember that schools won't send them home unless they have a fever. Just give her some tylenol next time before she goes and it will keep the fever at bay for four hours or so!
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