v30.9: Sick and Tired

Good morning folks,

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I dislike being sick.  Even worse, I dislike when one of my children is sick; especially when they are unable to speak and tell you what is wrong.  Babies can be a bundle of joy just as easily as a bundle of stress and worry.

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Our baby girl has been sick for the last couple weeks.  It started off as a simple cold with the runny nose and flu like symptoms but it turned into a few days of high fevers (104ish) and a lot of worry.  We took her to the Doctor who informed us to wait until Friday and if she was still having fevers to take her to the children's hospital.  The fevers seemed to go away but flared up again Saturday.  We took her to the hospital on Sunday and now she is on medication.  I won't go into all the details on what she has (nothing super serious) but we need to head back to the hospital today due to the results of her tests.

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Since babies are unable to articulate what is wrong with them ("Mom, my tummy hurts"), we have no way of knowing if she is crying because she is hungry, wet, tired, hurt or sick.  Trying to read the "cry" can be tricky but as parents we can typically tell the difference between hurt crying and hungry crying; there is a distinct difference there.  Of course when babies are ill they seem to sleep in short phases and cry in long phases resulting in a lot of sleepless nights.  We are on week two of getting less than 4 hours sleep a night and it is starting to really take its toll on us.  When parents are tired and baby is sick, we tend to snap a lot easier.  In fact, putting on that smile is all the more harder.  Thankfully one look at that little baby face is enough to take most of that fatigue induced anger away.

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Anyway folks, I best get back at it and get some work done.  We will be leaving for the doctor's office shortly which is never fun since you spend most of your time waiting, even though you have a specific appointment time to show up.  Yes, I'll be there for 10:30 and get in to see the doctor by noon.  This is the 21st century, why hasn't someone invented some kind of scheduling system where a patient calls in to book an appointment giving a brief description of the issue and the system determines how much of the doctor's time is needed for that appointment?  If they end up finishing early, that's great.  Letting your waiting room back up with scheduled appointments is never good.  There is a pretty good chance the person sitting next to you in the doctor's office waiting room is there for a reason.  Whether their contagious or not is a whole other question.

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Cheers,

Al