This weekend started normally enough. I think it was around 8am Saturday morning when Alex climbed on my back singing, “Good morning Mommy!” As he used me as a table for his Nintendo Switch. It amused me that it was in such stark contrast to how my brother and I used to greet the weekend by sneaking into the basement to watch cartoons and our copy of Star Wars on VHS recorded from TV all while hoping we did not wake our parents. This is Alex, forever seeing Mommy as his parent AND his playmate. Sunday, however, started a little differently. He woke and brought his Switch into his own bed, played for a little while, then put it down. Hearing the game stop I went and found him going back to sleep. Something was very wrong. I didn’t need the thermometer to tell me what his red lips already had: we had entered FEVER TOWN. It was 102° temp Sunday morning. 103° temp Monday morning. Each day the temp slowly fading to low grade, or, like, Monday afternoon, back to normal. There were no other symptoms. We kept him home from school today thinking we just wanted one full day of no temps between Alex and school. Then, at almost 8am, the hot potato child returned. We were still in fever town. I grabbed the thermometer to see how far in we had traveled overnight. This morning’s temp was 104.4°. Panic ensued. Drugs, ice, wipe downs and baths plus calls to the doctor, the daddy and the grandma all followed while the slow cool down commenced along with a more persistent cough. Finally another symptom. The doctor visit proved useful even though the fever was again GONE. I am overjoyed that it was not one of the “It’s a virus, nothing we can give you!” visits, but, instead, we are now armed with an antibiotic, an inhaler, new meds for the nebulizer, and a get-out-of-school for the week note. This has been the weirdest sickness for Alex to date. While I am, of course, overjoyed that he has not been suffering, I am troubled that a severe respiratory infection (with hints toward pneumonia) can sneak into my kid’s system without the loads of symptoms waving all the red flags and that the one red flag — the fever — could be lowered each day, fooling me each time. #momlife https://www.instagram.com/p/CpyVT6mucVD/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
