In the end, Tim missed the whole three-day sixth grade Outdoor Education trip. Each of the three mornings, he woke with a fever; each morning we said “Maybe tomorrow you can go.” We had plans and back-up plans and extra options for how to get him there. The first day, we said “You’ll only miss the introductions!” The second day, we said “You’ll still fit in one full day!” We told him no one would remember later on exactly which activities he was and was not present for, as long as he was there for some part of it.
But in the end, he wasn’t. He couldn’t rid himself of the fever that was keeping him listless and pale, so he stayed behind the whole time and thought about all his classmates up at camp in New Hampshire.
On Wednesday he asked to go over to my parents’ house for a little bit, thinking their company would cheer him up. When we arrived, my mother reminisced about an experience when she was a girl that I hadn’t heard before. She and her elder sister had rehearsed a tumbling act together for weeks; apparently the grand finale involved my mother being lifted high in the air (or possibly standing atop her sister and somehow elevating herself that way). She woke the morning of the gymnastics show with a fever and wasn’t allowed to go. “If I’d done the show, I probably wouldn’t remember it,” Mom said on Wednesday. “It’s memorable only because I was so disappointed I didn’t get to do it.”
That made me think about events that are memorable for having been missed. When I was about Holly’s age, a friend was having a birthday party; according to the invitation, there would be elephant rides, though looking back it’s very hard for me to imagine how this was going to happen in Carlisle, but I suppose it’s possible. I developed a high fever that day and had to miss the party; I thought about elephant rides for months after that. And as my parents both told Tim about while we were at their house, it was almost a certainty during my childhood that whenever the family took an airline trip together, at least one of us kids if not more would be sick sometime during our travels and have to miss out on some of the fun, lying in a hotel room bed instead. I can remember sore throats in destinations from Orlando to Palo Alto to San Francisco. Apparently we were extremely susceptible to airport germs.
Tim’s classmates all returned from the outdoor education trip last night. Yesterday I took Tim to the pediatrician, who said he should stay home today since he was still running a fever. I know Tim is bored and misses his friends, but I’m actually not sorry he won’t be at school today; all the other kids will be talking about the trip. By Monday, when Tim is likely to be all recovered, it won’t be such a hot topic anymore.
Of course, at eighth grade graduation two years from now, Tim will be missing from a lot of the images in the customary slide show. No ropes course for him; no campfire skits; no peering-out-of-the-cabin photos with the other guys. It’s a lesson all of us learn at some point: how to weather the disappointment of being sidelined when everyone else is off doing something great.
He’s okay with it, though. His group of friends had already planned an afternoon ice cream excursion for next week, and there’s a school dance the week after that. He’ll get back into the swing of things. And someday, like my mother with her tumbling show, he’ll be okay with remembering the outdoor education trip specifically for the fact that he missed it.
Showing posts with label sickness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sickness. Show all posts
Friday, April 29, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Under the weather
All was well until 10:30 on Sunday night. Holly had been in bed for two hours when she stumbled into our bedroom crying.
I asked her what was wrong.
“I don’t know!” she sobbed. “I can’t fall asleep and I can’t stop crying!”
The peculiarity as well as the illogic of that response tipped me off that all was no longer well. I tried to settle her back in bed, but she returned to our room within the hour. That time I lay down with her until she fell asleep, but the pattern continued four or five more times throughout the night. By daylight on Monday, she had a fever of 101. I dosed her up with Motrin and left a message on the absent line at school as Tim headed off for the bus.
Holly rested and watched TV all day. Her face was puffy, her nose stuffy. “Mommy, my nose is so tired from blowing!” she wailed at one point. She looked so miserable I didn’t have the heart to try to curtail the TV habit. Quite honestly, I’m surprised the child actors who play the twins on “The Suite Life with Zach and Cody” have lived enough hours to have taped the number of episodes she watched that day.
In the afternoon, my parents were kind enough to babysit for her at their house since I had a previously scheduled appointment. She’d barely eaten all day, but my mother cajoled her into downing a bowl of fresh strawberries. We weren’t even off my parents’ driveway yet after I picked her up when she started to fret. “Mommy, I suddenly feel much worse,” she said, followed by the inevitable projectile vomiting of the whole bowl of strawberries.
At the risk of giving far too much information, I’ll go even beyond my usual Pollyanna look-on-the-bright-side tendencies here to say that if there has to be something that your eight-year-old is going to throw up all over the back of your car, you could not do better than fresh strawberries. It was more like someone dumped a smoothie across the seat than had an actual digestive accident. But anyway.
We continued home. Once there, I mopped out the car with towels and put Holly’s jacket and blankie in the washing machine. Holly took a bath and felt better afterwards, at which point Tim came home looking very pale.
Holly had a good night’s sleep; this time it was Tim who woke on Tuesday with a fever of 101. Holly woke fever-free and cheerfully prepared for school; Tim struggled not to cry in light of the unhappy news that he was going to miss the first day of the sixth-grade three-day outdoor education trip. I promised him if he could shake the fever after one day, we’d drive him up ourselves and catch up to the rest of the class.
So Tim spent yesterday at home watching TV and dosing with Motrin. By the afternoon, he felt better. Holly returned home from school looking well and happy. Until she fell down the stairs and landed on her back. It was a pretty bad fall, although after extensive inspection Rick and I determined that the damage wasn’t serious. She’ll probably have a black-and-blue torso within another day or two, though.
So it hasn’t been the best start to the week for us. Some weeks are like this. We’re lucky ours aren’t worse. The kind of flu from which Holly bounced back easily (and then bounced on down the stairs on her back – but I don’t think that’s any more than a coincidence) would have landed my niece, who has a compromised respiratory system, in the emergency room. I’m grateful both my kids are so resilient to germs and recover from illness so quickly.
Now the upholstery in the car has been shampooed and the empty bottle of Motrin replaced. Disappointingly, Tim woke again today with a fever of 100. There’s still the possibility that he can make it to the third and final day of nature camp with his classmates tomorrow. All in all, we got through it relatively easily. Those weeks when everyone gets sick at once are the kind of experience every parent has but non-parents can’t quite imagine: the stress, the tiredness, the mess of it all.
We managed. Tim needs another day of rest, but soon we’ll all be back on our feet, and Holly has promised to skip a little more cautiously up and down the stairs from now on. Holly probably won’t ask for strawberries again for a good long time, but other than that, as far as I can tell, we emerged unscathed.
I asked her what was wrong.
“I don’t know!” she sobbed. “I can’t fall asleep and I can’t stop crying!”
The peculiarity as well as the illogic of that response tipped me off that all was no longer well. I tried to settle her back in bed, but she returned to our room within the hour. That time I lay down with her until she fell asleep, but the pattern continued four or five more times throughout the night. By daylight on Monday, she had a fever of 101. I dosed her up with Motrin and left a message on the absent line at school as Tim headed off for the bus.
Holly rested and watched TV all day. Her face was puffy, her nose stuffy. “Mommy, my nose is so tired from blowing!” she wailed at one point. She looked so miserable I didn’t have the heart to try to curtail the TV habit. Quite honestly, I’m surprised the child actors who play the twins on “The Suite Life with Zach and Cody” have lived enough hours to have taped the number of episodes she watched that day.
In the afternoon, my parents were kind enough to babysit for her at their house since I had a previously scheduled appointment. She’d barely eaten all day, but my mother cajoled her into downing a bowl of fresh strawberries. We weren’t even off my parents’ driveway yet after I picked her up when she started to fret. “Mommy, I suddenly feel much worse,” she said, followed by the inevitable projectile vomiting of the whole bowl of strawberries.
At the risk of giving far too much information, I’ll go even beyond my usual Pollyanna look-on-the-bright-side tendencies here to say that if there has to be something that your eight-year-old is going to throw up all over the back of your car, you could not do better than fresh strawberries. It was more like someone dumped a smoothie across the seat than had an actual digestive accident. But anyway.
We continued home. Once there, I mopped out the car with towels and put Holly’s jacket and blankie in the washing machine. Holly took a bath and felt better afterwards, at which point Tim came home looking very pale.
Holly had a good night’s sleep; this time it was Tim who woke on Tuesday with a fever of 101. Holly woke fever-free and cheerfully prepared for school; Tim struggled not to cry in light of the unhappy news that he was going to miss the first day of the sixth-grade three-day outdoor education trip. I promised him if he could shake the fever after one day, we’d drive him up ourselves and catch up to the rest of the class.
So Tim spent yesterday at home watching TV and dosing with Motrin. By the afternoon, he felt better. Holly returned home from school looking well and happy. Until she fell down the stairs and landed on her back. It was a pretty bad fall, although after extensive inspection Rick and I determined that the damage wasn’t serious. She’ll probably have a black-and-blue torso within another day or two, though.
So it hasn’t been the best start to the week for us. Some weeks are like this. We’re lucky ours aren’t worse. The kind of flu from which Holly bounced back easily (and then bounced on down the stairs on her back – but I don’t think that’s any more than a coincidence) would have landed my niece, who has a compromised respiratory system, in the emergency room. I’m grateful both my kids are so resilient to germs and recover from illness so quickly.
Now the upholstery in the car has been shampooed and the empty bottle of Motrin replaced. Disappointingly, Tim woke again today with a fever of 100. There’s still the possibility that he can make it to the third and final day of nature camp with his classmates tomorrow. All in all, we got through it relatively easily. Those weeks when everyone gets sick at once are the kind of experience every parent has but non-parents can’t quite imagine: the stress, the tiredness, the mess of it all.
We managed. Tim needs another day of rest, but soon we’ll all be back on our feet, and Holly has promised to skip a little more cautiously up and down the stairs from now on. Holly probably won’t ask for strawberries again for a good long time, but other than that, as far as I can tell, we emerged unscathed.
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