Parenting #3: Night Shift

- sensitive content warning

Thanks for calling, I’m sorry to wake you, I say to a doctor on call, who is Olive’s pediatrician, who I don’t know well - well actually don’t know at all, because we usually see Alice - his nurse practitioner, for O’s annual check ups and vaccines.

It’s about 12:50am, an hour after I spelled Olive’s name three times and backwards to the person who picked up at the answering service. O-l-i-v-e, I spell slowly from the corner of the couch, while Olive is sleeping in the bedroom with the cool air humidifier steaming above her. Her hot feet had pushed into me for comfort at about 11:50pm and I had that fear of a long night with a sick one ahead, although the night before had already been a bad one - and typically, I’ve found, the first night is the worst.

What, he asks, is the medical emergency, now that you’ve woken me up.

I’m not sure, I say. First I give him an explanation of where we’re at. Olive gets these high fevers at night. She’s six and she’s had them ever since she was a baby. So, right now she’s asleep but her temperature is high and I’m not sure what I should do. You and I don’t have a rapport because we usually see Alice and I’m new to San Francisco so I thought I might call. I’m looking out the window even though there’s nothing to see - the night is black and the neighborhood has always seems a little empty to me, ever since we moved here. A, Olive’s dad, walks into the room behind me and goes to the bathroom and sits on the couch and looks at his phone.

The rest of the conversation with the pediatrician is a shit show.

What, he asks, is her temperature.

I don’t know, because she’s sleeping, but her body seems hot.

You need to know to take her temperature because if it’s 103.9 you’re going to the emergency room, right?

It’s maybe 102, or 103, I say, from past experience.

You can’t estimate these things, he chides, and then he repeats his question. What is the medical emergency.

I put him on speaker and sit down next to A.

Do you have a pen and a paper, he’s asking me, or I think he said pencil, like anyone has pencils.

Uh, huh, I say.

Ok, he says, you’ve going to need to write this down. He gives me the address for the best ER which I’m grateful for! And then he walks me through a set of instructions: take the temperature three consecutive times, while also having a baseline temperature for the thermometer, which would be your own.

But she’s sleeping, I said and he says: you can take anyone’s temperature when they’re sleeping - and I remember when Olive was born and she needed a shot and I said, but she’s sleeping, and the nurse had said "“even better.” This was not better, in my opinion, and I was shocked to hear it said from a person who sees babies as soon as they’re born.

He goes on to repeat that if it’s 103.9 or above you go straight to the emergency room but also that once you are there they will likely be sending you home with some Motrin which we should have on hand and the children’s kind is more bang for your buck. He then says that almost never in his medical career, and that includes time in the ER, has he seen a kid with a temperature that high.

Do you have this written down, he paused to ask? Because you’re going to need it every time she gets sick.

It’s now 1:17am. So it sounds, I say, like we’re to do nothing and he repeats his instructions about taking her temperature three times in a row and I’m asking over what period of time and then he’s reminding us that we can come in on Monday but only after we’ve administered a COVID test because “the girls in the office” get nervous about that or maybe he used the word crazy. But don’t take the test until day four or five of the illness, he’s saying now because before that you could get a false positive. It’s unclear to me what he thinks we should be doing on day one - day three.

Is she at home, are parents at work, are you all outside? he’s asking me now.

Well, she goes to school, I say and there he’s got his launchpad.

Now that, he says, is what I’m seeing. The kids - they get over it, but they’re coming home and giving it grandma and grandpa when they’re unvaccinated -

Well, we’re all vaccinated here, I interrupt.

Even the kids, he said?

Yes, I confirmed.

I do not take him to task on his misinformation that implies all kinds of things including that unvaccinated children are putting people more at risk than others. Aren’t they not, even now, I don’t know. Or is it just that we still know very little at all.

Will you help me? I ask A, when we got off the phone. Because I do not understand what it is he just said.

You can imagine the fight that ensued. It was loud, vicious and mostly unhelpful but three things came up for me after that.

1) I realized had not slept the night before and I was going crazy with the anticipatory stress of another night that could potentially be sleepless

2) That day I had washed the dishes and clothes and made broth and chicken soup and ordered groceries and cleaned the living room and still felt unseen

3) I asked for help and I’m glad that I did

O woke up happy and well rested and warm to the touch and I made her breakfast and headed out to salvage what was left of the day. And then, as all parents here already know, we both got sick.