Sick Feet

One of Miles's current favorite books (they go in and out of favor) is The Foot Book. One of the pages says "well feet, sick feet," and I've been telling him now he has sick feet.

His morning fever yesterday went away but he woke up from his afternoon nap feeling hot again. I confess that I've never taken a rectal temp - the whole idea scares me - and I was not about to attempt it on a squirmy baby with no husband home to hold him still. So I got an oral temp, despite vigorous protests, of 103. Eep.

Kids always get sick on the weekends don't they? I always had pregnancy woes on weekends too. Anyway I called the nurse line and they took about an hour to call me back, thank god it wasn't a time-sensitive problem! She went through long lists of symptoms with me, but the weird thing was the fever was his ONLY symptom. Even his mood was great - he was sitting on the floor talking gleefully to a stuffed dog at that very moment.

The final conclusion was that I should take him to Urgent Care in the morning if he still had a fever, because she was counting that as 24 hours of fever despite the respite we'd had all day. And that was because of the lack of other symptoms... if he developed any other symptoms, I could wait three days to have him seen by a doc, oddly enough. I don't know if that's because they think I might be missing something important? I don't know. I should also take him in ASAP if he went over 105.

His temp continued to zig zag up and down all evening. After his bath he shivered horribly until I got him into pajamas. He was tired and went to bed early, but then of course I woke him by trying to sneak a thermometer into his mouth because he seemed to be getting hotter... peaking at 104.5 which freaked me out. All this time I was texting with Mr. Ibis, who is out of town for work, trying to figure out what to do. But as quickly as his temp peaked, it dropped back down around 102. He cried for a while but then passed out exhausted and his forehead became cool for a long time. I was stiff with anxiety and afraid to go to sleep... but eventually I did.

It's times like that I am glad to be bed sharing. During the night his temperature would rise and he was getting the chills too... I had a corner of my blanket over him but mainly just curled my body around him to keep him warm.

This morning? Low temp. 100.2 last I checked but again it's going up and down. He seems a little congested but I don't know if this is enough of an "other symptom" to justify not going to Urgent Care. It doesn't open til noon anyway so I can put off the decision for a while... but it's also snowing. Again. Sigh.

It is terrifying to have to make decisions about this little person's health. The answer is not at all clear in times like these. I don't want to drag him out through the snow and cold and dangerous streets and germy waiting rooms only to be given some Tylenol... but I don't want to keep him home if he needs medical attention. I was thinking last night maybe I should go to med school and become a pediatrician myself, that's totally logical, right? Big sigh.