Bring On The Season

We have started off cold and flu season with a bang!

This past Thursday I was brought down by a terrible stomach bug. The worst of it lasted about 24 hours and it took a couple of days for me to feel normal again. As I was recovering and Dave taking charge of childcare, Lydia came down with a cold. We fired up the humidifier and didn't think too much of it.

On Sunday I wiped Lydia's mouth with a baby wipe and her chin broke out in a really bad rash. Anna had the cold now too.

Monday is our community day for Sarah's homeschool group. Sarah woke up with a bit of a sore throat, but we forged ahead in good spirits. (This turned out to be basically the worst decision of the week. Maybe the month. Possibly will go down as worst decision of the year.) Around dinner time Josiah started to slow down. He went out to look at the moon and got a chill her couldn't seem to shake. Then he asked to go to bed early. I took a peek at his throat before bed and saw spots- the next day was more than likely going to start with a trip to the doctor.

Sure enough, he was still feeling down Tuesday morning. Sarah also woke up with a fever. So we loaded up and went to town for our pediatrician's walk-in sick clinic. I signed Josiah and Lydia up for appointments since he was clearly sick and Lydia's chin wasn't getting better. (It seems greedy to sign all four up!) Once we were in the exam room, the friendly nurse kept glancing at Sarah and said she thought we should add Sarah to the appointment. When the doctor arrived she started with Josiah because he was the one who looked like he didn't feel good. I was expecting a hand foot mouth diagnosis, so was surprised to hear that she was confident he had strep. Before she did the strep test she looked at Sarah's throat and said she wanted to swab both. Then she moved on to Lydia and quickly gave her the hand foot mouth diagnosis that I was expecting. With high contagious HFM and strep in the family, the doctor asked if she could check Anna too. Gladly! Turned out Anna had an ear infection. Strep swabs both came back positive.

At this point we were a circus, albeit a mostly happy circus, of files, papers, prescriptions, questions, incubation periods, and instructions. The appointment ended with "do you have any other children?" I assured her she had seen the whole team and we would stay away from all other humans for the foreseeable future.

In the days since, Josiah also developed HFM and we have gone through a box of kleenex. It turns out that giving medicine to a baby who doesn't like bottles or a paci is really challenging. Altogether spirits are high. The weather has been beautiful and our isolation period is coming to an end! Dave brought me mums, hand sanitizer, and vitamins- true love at its finest!

Sarah read to him on Monday night. She said,"how about I choose two, you choose two." He said, "how about I choose zero and you choose them all." I knew he wasn't feeling good!

Stickers make everyone happy.

As do diggers. We watched some construction while we waited for prescriptions to be filled. It didn't hurt that they are working next to the Starbucks with the drive-through :)

I asked the doctor if Anna was going to have trouble with her ears since she got an infection so young. She said that the only trouble was that Anna was the fourth child during cold season and to expect that she would get sick more than the others.

Not an easy business.

We might just get pharmacy status at this rate :)