So Many Possibilities

[dr_pretentious]

Did we catch this bug from the other kids at the library's story hour? At the fabulous Please Touch Museum, where we touched things? From the several thousand riders and supporters at the Livestrong Challenge finish line? At the gymnastics academy that had an open house for its preschoolers' program, where we found the only ball pit I've seen anywhere since the H1N1 outbreak started? From the playdate where the other kids' mom said they were over the roseola and couldn't possibly still be contagious?

Some quarantine decisions are easy: we won't be keeping our weekend plans with anybody who's starting chemotherapy on Monday. Other decisions are not so easy. If we caught the bug at the library, we don't need to stay home from story hour tomorrow. If from our playdate, then we know at least one family we can play with this week. Heck, if we knew the bug to be roseola, we could shrug, mumble something about it being common and mostly harmless, and pretend there was nothing to see here. But the Please Touch Museum is in another city two hours away, and half the riders at the finish line were from the DC area, and this might not be roseola, so maybe we're New Jersey's patients 0, 1, and 2.

If Gareth were in daycare, we'd be facing this quandary at least once a month. Great googly-moogly, how do parents with kids in daycare survive?

(Oh, and it looks like I've overcome my swearing habit. Heck? Great googly-moogly? Those really were the first words that popped into my head for those sentences. Another year of childrearing, and people will hardly be able to tell I live in Jersey.)

EDIT:
Dan's well enough to cook...sort of.

Comments

[tigira.livejournal.com]

F has been in daycare since he was 3 months old, and rarely got or gets colds. If other kids get them, he doesn't seem to, or else he only has very faint symptoms.

It's not all kids that get sick all the time in daycare.

Some do fine.

[louiseroho.livejournal.com]

While Will was in daycare, I worked from home.

[tracyandrook.livejournal.com]

uh, what does Gareth have? Dots or drips or diarrhea?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

We're all congested. I'm guessing he's got post-nasal drip, since Dan and I both do. We're all fatigued and irritable. Gareth, who usually sleeps so well, slept so badly last night that Dan and I can't really guess how we would have slept if we hadn't been woken four times by an inconsolable wailing child. None of us are quite feverish, but we are running a little warmer than usual. Gareth's had a mild rash since the really hot weather started, so it's hard to say whether he's got any new rashiness. Since the Mayo Clinic website describes roseola as often so mild that many children are virtually asymptomatic, or may have only a couple of symptoms to any noticeable degree, I figure the absence of other symptoms doesn't rule it out. I'm not sure what would rule it out.

He's doing better since we started giving him tylenol and ibuprofen infants' drops, but whenever the last dose is down within its final half hour, he starts showing signs of major discomfort again. That's pretty much what we're experiencing with our grown-up versions of the same OTC meds. I'm lowballing my own doses, since the little guy is not quite weaned yet.

With tylenol and ibuprofen, we can sort of approximate normalcy, which makes it really tempting to get out of the house. The possibility of getting sicker and having to stay home is making me preemptively restless.

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

It's no fun to be sick and even less fun to have a sick kid. Maybe you can get out and do something low key like the park if it isn't too hot. I keep my kids in until the worst is past but not until every single sympton is gone (I hate to bring kids with runny noses or coughs out because it is contagious so easily that way.)

So far A. only brought one cold home from preschool but it isn't cold season yet. You can call or email me for a play date when you are all a bit better.

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

Oh, it is hard when little ones can't tell you how they feel. Even at 3, they can describe some things but not others (niece's stock phrase is "my tummy hurts", which covers just about all types of illness). Poor kid. Poor you, too.

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

This is why I don't really worry about it, how are you to say where it came from? I agree avoiding chemo patients is a worthy goal but other than that, I just let my kids do whatever they feel up to when they are sick and let their energy levels be our guide, not the contamination factor. I do, however, warn parents of other kids before playdates. Usually I get the same "Meh" response.

I also know some people who obsess about where their kids got the germs that made them sick, as if by knowing that, they can inflict some sort of justice upon the offenders. I don't worry about where we got it, and I don't really worry about where it goes.

[thecrimsony.livejournal.com]

Last week the boy came down with a stuffy nose that's now gone, the girl has had a cough up until yesterday or so. Me, I got STREP THROAT over last weekend. This is weeks AFTER we cut them back to one day of summer camp a week. There is no logic, there is just PLAGUE! :p

[tracyandrook.livejournal.com]

well at least the play date is somebody you can call. Stretching it would be calling the library and the kiddie gym.
THe Giant Book of pediatric nursing says about roseola:
usually from 6 months to 3 years. Incubation 5--15 days. Persistent high fever greater than 102F for 3 to 4 days in a child who appears well. Precipitous drop in fever to normal with appearance of rash. Photo shows a diffuse spread of discrete dots all over the trunk. First on trunk, then to neck, face, extremities, fades on pressure, lasts 1 to 2 days. Swollen glands, cough and runny nose. Non-specific care, Administer antipyretics as needed.
In other words, what you said.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

That's great news! Seriously, it is.

If it is Nick we got it from, that means you and I can get together to write without worrying that I'll give you some awful germ that will make life with asthma even harder during the first week of the school year. Let's see if we can match symptoms over the phone tomorrow, and if it still seems like the same malady, we can make some coffee dates.

The only reason I worry about where I got it from is because I don't want to expose people who haven't been exposed yet, especially people who have some extra risk factor that makes easy germs hard. Please don't stress on my account over something you couldn't have known was coming. Kids get sick, kids spread contagion, that's life with kids.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

There is no logic, there is just PLAGUE! :p

Ah, but there is logic to that one (though I agree that sometimes there just isn't). You have to keep taking care of the kids when you have a little touch of something, while the kids' responsibilities are mostly things they can take a break from when they get sick.

Feel better, all of y'all!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, yes, germs are part of life with kids. Gareth and I will get sick together many more times before this season of our lives is over.

I only worry about where it came from because I can't help worrying about where it goes. When sabrinamari was doing her dissertation research on a population with HIV, if somebody exposed her to a cold or flu, that put her informants in mortal peril, and sometimes put her in the position of not being able to go into the field in person when she needed to be there. And before vgnwtch got her chronic fatigue under control, she used to catch every bug that came down the pike. It wasn't mortal peril, but stuff that other people could beat in a couple of days would linger with her for weeks or months. I picked up a habit of sensitivity to the issue, and you never know when a habit like that might come in handy again, so I hesitate to dismantle it, even though the parents Gareth and I see most often are pretty mellow about this stuff.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The cough is pretty annoying. It's free to leave whenever it's ready.

Our new pedagogical challenge: teaching Gareth to cough into his elbow, rather than right on people. He's figuring out please and thank you, and is starting to understand sorry, but each of those took months of modeling, explanation, and prompting, and they're still works in progress. I suspect he'll be coughing right in people's faces for at least another year before he adopts the elbow habit.

Thank goodness he enjoys hand washing.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I still have high hopes for next week.