Sick Daze II

My child is still sick. She was sick for 2 days and then her fever went away for 24 hours and by Sunday afternoon she was feverish again. By the night time she had a fever of 104.5. When my kids are sick they both get high fevers in the 103s and 104s. At 104 we do sponge baths and fever reducers and cold Gatorade and food and rest. When I tell this to people they look at me like I am some kind of negligent a**hole who should drive to the closest ER. If they are eating and drinking and don't have a stiff neck and back and are not sensitive to light we get the soonest doctors appointment. So that's what we did. We got her fever down a few degrees and I let her lay in bed with me.

Her fever began to break and the sweat just poured out of her body. She was soaked. I kept mopping her off but that didn't seem to help. At one point she sat up and angrily pulled her pants off and threw them. "Those pants bother me." Whenever we lay in bed together she tries to roll on top of me. We always joke that I am a magnet for the children. She laid her slimy sweaty leg on top of me and we just laid in a puddle of nasty feverish sweaty fluid. I was too tired to care. Periodically I would reach over to check her pulse. Not to actually check her heart rate but to remind myself that it was still beating. As cool, calm and collected as I seem to be when my kids are sick there is a little piece of me that gets super neurotic and thinks that their cold is going to "steal their breath." So I never really sleep when they are sick. I keep waking up to check on them. I thought that whole thing would pass after they reached their first birthday but it never has.

When my oldest child is ill she always feels better after a shower. She has taken 5 showers a day. A few weeks ago when the kids were showering we were out of clean towels so I had to pull some from the dryer. They remarked at how warm and good they felt. Now they request warm towels. If I am in a favorable mood, I give in to this request. My sick child asks me for a warm towel every time. I can't say no to her cute little feverish face. I feel like I a running a day spa with this whole "warm towel" business. I have to go now - literally, I have to go retrieve a towel because my daughter is ready to get out of the shower. After she is well, no more pampering in this house!