oloriel | Immune training (I guess)

We all know what they say about the first time in Kindergarten - no, not about the difficulties adjusting to a new group and new rules, the other thing. The one about "Oh, he'll be dragging home all kinds of infections now."
Yep - it's started. Felix is ill - seriously ill for the first time.

It began harmlessly, two weeks ago, with a common enough cold - mostly a runny nose - that just didn't go away. Then the day before yesterday, Felix was particularly testy all day - no other outward symptoms, just more stubborn and more easily tearful than usual. Well, he only nibbled on his food, and had no patience for any game. But I thought he was just having a particularly terrible Terrible Twos day. And perhaps a lack of sleep, his eyes were beginning to look a bit glassy?

And then suddenly, his hand felt hot. Really hot. Terrifyingly hot. As did the rest of him. So I ran for the thermometer and explained that I needed to take his temperature, which he permitted.

40.5°C.

OK, I thought, 40.5°C isn't "slightly raised temperature". 40.5°C isn't "sometimes kids get this towards evening when they've been romping around all day". 40.5°C is "HELP. RIGHT NOW."
(For the non-Celsius crowd out there, 36.3°C-37.3°C is Normal, and 42°C is when the system collapses.)

Paracetamol to the rescue, and indeed, the fever went down after half an hour and we could go to bed more or less relieved. But during the night, when Felix woke up after a nightmare (what he said didn't sound particularly nightmarish, but he certainly behaved like it was the end of the world), he felt hot again. "Only" 39°C, so I let him sleep it out.

The next morning - yesterday - I got a sub-emergency appointment with Felix' doctor. Of course when we were at the doctor's, Felix climbed up and down the examination table and his fever was down to 38.1°C, so I felt like one of those overprotective mothers who'll panic at anything and bother the doctor for every trifle. At any rate, the doctor diagnosed an ear inflammation. Probably caused, in the end, by the runny nose, because that's typically how kids get their otitis. Felix never complained of pain in his ear (he did complain of pain in his mouth occasionally), but some things I had wondered about in the past week might have been subtle pointers - for instance, he began to move his tongue around in his mouth in the manner I remember from the time when I had hayfever, trying to assuage the itch in my ears. And he had little accidents that I put down to carelessness but that were perhaps due to a disturbed sense of balance?

Either way, ear inflammation. The fever's just a free bonus. The doc prescribed "ear drops" (except you don't drip them into the ear, you take them orally, hence the quotation marks) for the otitis and Ibuprofen whenever the fever gets too high (which, by this doctor's definition, is higher than 39.5°C). And because of the weekend ahead, in case the ear got worse, he also prescribed an antibiotic that we'll hopefully not need.

Back at home, I almost tried it at once because the fever ran high again and Felix was extremely sensible to touch (as in, EVERYTHING HURTS, WEARING CLOTHES HURTS) and inconsolable. I managed to fight down MY rising panic and gave him the "ear drops" and an Ibuprofen. I also managed to convince him that maybe a nap was indicated. After the nap, he behaved right as rain and all was well until evening, when the fever rose again (not high enough do justify more meds - THAT only happened at 1 AM, of course!).

And that seems to be how he works at the moment - alternating between "Everything is right, I want to romp around and play" and "Everything is pain, but I don't want my meds". I convince him the meds are his friend (and indeed, in the "everything is pain" phase, I don't think for a second that it's wrong to take them), they begin to work, he behaves like a perfectly healthy, playful child again (and in that phase, I think I'm overreacting and he could probably handle this on his own. No, he can't. He only reaches that phase in the first place thanks to modern pharmacology, dammit.).

On the whole, I feel frustratingly insecure. And, of course, worried. Sheesh, he's three years old, he couldn't stay ridiculously healthy forever. But, well, it's the first time he's genuinely ill, so I guess insecurity is normal.

Now I just hope Julian won't catch it, either (he did catch the runny nose, so I guess chances are "good" he'll catch the rest too, especially as Felix just won't learn that Ill Children Shouldn't Be Cuddling Their Little Siblings No Matter How Much They Love Them). He can be given the ear drops (at a lower dosage) and we have baby Paracetamol in the house, but I'd just really rather not.

And of course, this happens when Jörg is on a business trip to the States so I'm on my own. Yep, insecure.