The bugs bit…

(This is not for the faint of heart.  If you don’t like kids or illness, you’ll do well to click to another site now.  You’ve been warned.)

This week every kid in day care came down with the bug – except for my kids.  The rest of them actually tossed around between them a selection of viral things like so many nasty bean bags. 

Three of the youngest arrived Monday with a firm grip on Fifth Disease, or so their families’ doctors said.  Reddened cheeks (“a slapped face look” as described in the favorite how-to-raise-kids-manual), a fever, irritability, all the textbook symptoms, meaning: there’s nothing for this except time.

A couple of the other kids were down with an opportunistic upper respiratory bug, replete with a hacking cough, runny nose, teary eyes and truly ugly disposition.  Just for grins and giggles, one child gets the “stomach flu”…whatever the hell that really is, besides a name for a parent up all night cleaning up behind a spewing child.

The kids with Fifth Disease progress from the slapped look on Monday morning to the slimy nose thing on Wednesday morning to parents up all night Thursday night.  It’s a perfect portrait of a biological terror attack in small scale. 

Fortunately, my oldest child at nine years of age has already been exposed to most of this stuff and has a well-developed immune system.  She’s only manifested a little sore throat and some moodiness.  The moodiness may or may not be related to the bug(s); it could be the early onset of “tween-age” hood.  We’ll be certain if the moodiness lasts more than a month, but I think she’s lost to us now, a teenager in the larval phase.

Unfortunately, my younger child at five years of age went all week with nary a wheeze until Thursday evening and then wham, down for the count.  No, he didn’t get that insipid Fifth Disease (which he may already have been exposed to when his sister got it a couple of years ago), but the slimy nose thing is definitely with him.  With him in the full demonic sense of possession. 

Okay, call me a sexist pig, but he’s a guy’s guy – it’s the end of the world when he’s sick.  He’s simply beside himself when he can’t breathe, waking me up at two in the morning because his nose is stuffy.  He’s coughing and hacking all over the place, ignoring our impassioned pleas to cover his mouth.  He just doesn’t care because, well, it IS the end of the world after all and it just doesn’t matter any more.  Most of this household will suffer quietly when we’re ill, but not this guy, the king of drama.  He breaks down into tears when his nose gets chapped, sobbing and demanding I do something to “make his nose go away”.

It’s one of those times I’m seen as having super powers.  I can “make a nose go away” with a wave of my Carmex wand and a presentation of Kleenex Lotion tissues.  Sometimes I wonder whether it’s enabling to perpetuate the idea that Super Mom will somehow make it go away…but then he dissolves into desperate begging and a flood of tears and I cave in and get out the magic Mom wand.

The guilt is enormous, though.  In spite of what is obviously real pain and suffering (which pains me, too), I actually take some small pleasure in seeing this child ill for a short time.  Not long, a day would be fine, no more than three days (and three long, sleepless nights) is enough.  A week of illness is sheer torment for all of us.  But a day or two brings me a fleeting joy.

This afternoon, for a short time, for only a mere fraction of an hour, this spinning, whirling dervish, this Tasmanian Devil (the Warner Brothers kind), the very manifestation of applied torque, slept in my arms like a baby.  Like the apple-faced, softly-breathing, limply-trusting baby I used to race home to nurse every night.  His lashes, thick and heavy, resting on his cherubic cheek, downy baby-furred skin moist from fevered sweat, his brow calm and uncharacteristically without emotion.  The short brush-cut thicket of hair that we teasingly call “bunny fuzz” resting against my cheek.  Only for a few fleeting minutes he’s my baby again, breathing quietly, at peace in my arms.

And then, he rouses, remembers the end of the world is upon us, and proceeds to remind the rest of us that we must mend his misery and give him succor, immediately.

The guilty magic spell is broken. 

8:07:02 PM    comment []

Psst…more quickies…

A few quickies that gave me pause.  Did they do the same to you?

Sticky situation

It’s good that science may have determined how embryos attach to the womb, along with the possible cause of pre-eclampsia and some infertility problems.  However this knowledge could be used improperly, resulting in more children born with birth defects.   There are multiple reasons why humans’ percentage of successful, healthy live births is fairly high.  At a minimum, conditions external and internal to the womb must be absolutely conducive to attachment and sustainability, not the least of which is a viable embryo.  We do not yet understand all of the mechanisms related to natural viability selection.  It may be that the stickiness of the embryo is inherently related to its viability.  If this new knowledge were used indiscriminately for the implantation of any and all embryos produced, then a larger number of flawed embryos may be implanted and carried.

It’s not just a Hummer anymore…

After reading this article I want to run right out and order myself a brand -spanking new tax cut.  I’d like a big shiny black one; I’ll it use to bring in my backyard zucchini-and-tomato harvest for my new neighborhood farm stand business.  Heck, this tax cut actually makes more sense than anything Dubya proposed during his tenure since it directly stimulates investment in capital equipment and jobs at the Hummer factory.  Now if they could just make a Hummer that used fuel cells…

The whole truth…

Maxine Daley asked me in comments what was it that made me angry Thursday while sharing that she frequently feels the same way.  I stumbled on a great quote from another very astute Salon blogger, Doug Anders, which pretty much sums it up:

Once, in a theology class, I heard a great line, "Jesus only told you half the story. Yes, the truth will set you free, but first it's going to piss you off."

Guess you and I have been hearing a lot of the truth lately, Maxine.  Though this leaves me wondering when we’ll get set free…

10:22:06 AM    comment []