Is being a smartass a symptom of H1N1? If so, then Isaac has definitely had it. Indeed, I think it's swept through the house in the last two weeks, felling each of us separately like a stand of trees.
First was Elias, the smallest, weakest member of the herd. A week ago Thursday (oct 29, I guess), both boys were too sick for school. Sick, but not sick-sick. They were coughing, slightly feverish, but happily sitting side by side in bed with plates of pancakes and "The Munsters… Today!" playing on hulu. That was in the morning, though. By late afternoon (irony: we were planning to go get h1n1 vaccines at that exact time), Elias woke up from his nap with mega-croup. Those of you who haven't stared down the real croup have no idea the dread and the code red feeling of it. But now that I've been down this road with him many times, I had a protocol to follow. 1) albuterol puffs; 2) cold air treatment; 3) if still crouping, head to the ER. In less than ten minutes I ran through them all. Words of the dr came to mind: "I don't want you to play emergency room at home, though. Take a few minutes to get him cleared, but not too many. Then go!"
I dragged Isaac out of bed and threw clothes on the screaming, crouping one, then drove. Part of my hope was that the calming motion of the driving and the cool air would get him to stop, that we would get to the ER but not have to go in. But when we got there his breathing was still horrible, and his airway so constricted he could barely whisper. He had the dreaded "stridor at rest." So I brought him and within just moment or two they had him hooked up to a breathing treatment, which made him scream, but shortly had the swelling down in his little trachea and his airway open again. They found an ear infection, gave him antibiotics and steroids, and kept us another three hours or so for observation, but that was it. He was fine.
Fast forward to Halloween– Isaac's turn. First of all, you should know that we all put tremendous effort into making Isaac a godzilla costume for Halloween. Over the preceding weeks, Ben and Isaac started out with a chicken wire armature, covered it with paper mache, and then we painted it. Meanwhile, I cut and glued a jumpsuit, fashioned a large tail stuffed with batting, and worked on hands and feet to go with it. Indeed all day of Halloween day, Ben and I were scrambling with the details. The dining room table was littered with godzilla parts. The tail structure (Ben had pinned it to the jumpsuit, but it couldn't support the weight, and so I had suggested that it be attached to the head piece with a linking section of chicken wire) had to be reworked. Finally, it came together, something like this:
and this:
We didn't get a picture of the whole costume all together, with hands and feet and jumpsuit… and glowing light-up mouth!… because around this time, the boy in it started seeming, well, sick. Not just a little sick, either. But real sick. TO begin with, he had a cough that would not let up. I gave him his normal flovent and some albuterol to see if that helped. Still coughing, so I gave him another round of both. After a while he was still coughing, so I gave him a third dose of albuterol and planned, if this doesn't work, I'll have to take him to the ER.
His breathing did finally clear (double flovent, triple albuterol… and it was fairly okay, ie. not a good sign.) He went in to the TV room and curled up on the couch. I checked on him and thought he seemed a little feverish. I took his temp and it was 99. Okay, so…. we'll see. But then he fell asleep for the whole afternoon, and as he slept, I kept taking him temperature (in his armpit, adding a degree), and it kept climbing. Until it was maybe an hour before he was supposed to go up to Penninsula to meet his friend Jens for trick-or-treating, and it was 102.8 and he was unconscious.
At that point, we had to accept that it was impossible, not gonna happen. Ben decided to take Elias (a ghost, who looked a little too much like a Klansman for my taste) down to his parents for trick-or-treating there. IN our town, Bath, the trick-or-treating was actually Sunday night, so we thought it was possible that he would be well enough the next day. So all evening I kept my sick-child vigil. Just sitting there and checking his breathing (the thing I was really worried about the most), and taking his temperature and making sure he had the right amount of blankets– not to many or too few– and reading on the internet about flu symptoms and what to do about them. He slept, and slept, waking up one time to cry his eyes out and semi-vomit.
The next morning, he seemed a lot perkier, and the day look promising there for a while. His temp came down to 99 and he began to run about the house like a nutcase, as per normal. However, around mid-afternoon, he collapsed while watching Tom and Jerry's Greatest Chases. His temperature went up again. He slept for ten hours… right through trick-or-treating (I took Elias, aka Superman). When he woke up at 10 pm, apparently feeling quite well, he asked whether it was time to go trick-or-treating now, and we had to break the grim news to him. He sobbed and sobbed, understandably– all that candy!! Not collected!! But I did cheer him up by handing him a huge bag of candy– Elias's haul was enormous, even divided by two.
Ben crashed and I was exhausted, but both boys were sugared up. In a moment of unprecedented bad parenting, I set them up watching "The Munsters…Today!" on hulu (don't check it out!), and left them there, together, at 11:30 at night, with two huge sacks of candy. "Oh, this will not end well… " I predicted. But I went in the other room and fell asleep anyway, because I just couldn't stand up anymore.
As it was, they crawled into bed with me a scant hour and a half later, sated, and somehow (perhaps due to illness) tired! They slept all the way to morning, despite the sugar binge. Elias was well enough for school, but Isaac had been running a fever all day Sunday, and his school (wisely, I think) has a 24 hour rule– you have to stay home for a full 24 hours after a fever. I took Isaac to the dr on Monday, because I suspected he had an ear infection on top of it, and with his asthma you just can't fool around with a respiratory virus. He did have an ear infection, so got antibiotics and also oral steroids to keep his airways functioning through it (on top of his usual inhalers).
How to create horrible behavior in an active child? SImply lock him up in the house for a week, feed him tons of candy, and put him on steroids!!
Ah yes, he was a gem much of the time, demonstrating why "climbing the walls" is not just a figure of speech. But he would alternate that sort of derring-do with lying flat and still, baking with fever, and/or coughing in some horrible fashion. On Weds morning, just when I thought it was all over, he barfed. Yes… we were this close to getting in the car to go to school– sweet freedom– and he threw up all over the place, which meant that he had to stay home, of course, one more day! (I think the barfing was not a stomach thing so much as a drainage/throat crud/gagging situation… TMI.)
Meanwhile, I was loosing my mind, not all that gradually. I missed vestibular therapy, Friday, Monday, Friday, and will miss it Monday again too… I haven't been doing my exercises too well in the midst of all this, and now of course I'm sick too. For me it really kicked in on Thursday, when I had periods of semi-delerium and horrible coughing. I really thought I wouldn't be able to get Isaac from school (I already had Elias), and also felt like it was going to bring on a vertigo thing, or something really bad was about to happen. But I fended it all off with a barrage of over-the-medication, five grams of vitamin C, neti potting galore, green tea, and half a snickers. This got me through the afternoon. When Ben got home I took to my bed and lay there with fever and chills and horrible chest hack.
Friday… still sick. I canceled vestibular therapy and spent my precious two child-free hours trying to get well at light speed. Didn't work.
Still sick today, although life is better because Ben (who is also sick but will never, ever listen to reason… the CDC hates people like him, germ vector that he is), took the kids on an outing, and I got to sleep a couple more hours. Now it's incredibly beautiful out today. Sunny, full of color, and may crack 60 degrees. I'm thinking of trying to clear my lungs with a walk.
Has it been h1n1? I sort of think so, but there's no telling. The doctors aren't testing for it and the symptoms are the same. We've been trying to get into one of these wait-3-hours-in-line clinics to get the vaccine, but one or more of us has been sick every time there's been a chance to do it. The next option is on Thursday, and surely, surely, we'll all be well by then!