House Arrest & Co-Pays

I am sure we are all dealing with our fair share of winter ailments. Mine is winter itself. I have officially been suffering from it since December 26th. I keep waiting for that "January thaw" that is supposed to happen, but I have lost faith. In search of a cure, I will be heading south to St. George. If 80 pound 80 year olds find reprieve there than so can I. At least for a couple of days. Unfortunately for my little guy, that is another story. He has been suffering from a good old cough and intermittent fevers.
He has been battling this since last Thursday, and in our house that is a long time. We are used to 24 hour flu's and relatively short stints of runny noses. This has been a particularly hard week because he has missed out on a show and tell, primary activity, birthday party, play dates, church, and school. He is was on house arrest.
Poor kid. Little did he know that I debated on borrowing a surgical mask from my father in law, so I could haul him around, but I feared people would think he had Saars disease. With that option out of the question, it meant that Olivia and I were his cell mates. The week actually fared well enough, but then he started asking, "Mom, can we do something fun today?" I actually almost gave in at times to let him go somewhere because he seemed well, but at the last minute I would reconsider, and it always seemed to be for the best. We had never dealt with such a virus. The fever decided to come and go every other day, and the cough even changed through out the week.
Finally, last night I caved and decided we better figure out if this was really something. After all, I didn't want to leave Kevin with an infected child if something could be done about it. At 8:15pm we drove to a doctors appointment only to find out that he was 42 lbs. with a perfect temperature, blood pressure, oxygen intake, and clear ears, nose, and throat. Twenty dollars well spent. Pssht. The only thing positive was that the doctor said he seemed well enough to go back to school. I had already decided to keep him home one more day, just to make sure, but was trilled to be able to tell him playgroup was a go for Thursday.
Well, the next morning, all was well (besides the plumbers fixing a leak from the ceiling of the downstairs guest bedroom from our upstairs master tub) for a few hours. Suddenly, he began shrieking in pain and demanded I clean the wax out of his ears. I was taken back and wondering what all his fuss was about. I began to fear that something had crawled in his ear last night and was making a nice home in there. Later, I blamed that on watching too many episodes of House. He begged for another doctors visit. I refused. I had just paid 20 bucks the night before to have his ears checked out. Instead, I changed the subject and offered lunch. Fish sticks and pears seemed to do the trick, or so I thought.
Two hours later he wanted to go again. The idea of naps was slowly beginning to slip through my fingers, but I realized I better be thankful I have a child that can communicate with me his pains in detail. We threw on our shoes and piled in the car. Remarkably there was no wait in the Quick Care (because there was no way I was driving all the way back to his doctors), and $20 later we were getting weighed, squeezed, gagged, and probed. After all the froo froo was over we saw the doc. He asked a few questions, checked the ear, and low and behold...an ear infection! How can it possibly be that not even 24 hours later he developed this? Well, now I know. If you have a cold that lasts about a week, an ear infection can very possibly follow in children.
I was happy I listened. He was happy I listened, and Olivia, well, she got two suckers. After all that was over, I rewarded them with a sprinkle doughnut and Spencer even got his own special bottles of Amoxycillen! Even better, they BOTH took a little nap when we got home.
Hopefully now everyone can have a fun happy weekend...especially ME! Thanks Kevin! You are the best!