SLICE OF LIFE
the strep throat edition
On Sunday night Olive had a low high fever. This is actually rare for her. Usually she has a raging fever that takes over after a low grade fever and I feel terrified for 48 hours while her body burns up whatever virus had to audacity to enter. It’s a ferocious process that I’ve come to respect, which doesn’t mean that I don’t administer Advil at night for my own peace of mind. When she was little I’d stay up in the same bed, sometimes wiping her head with wet towels. In the morning she’d ask if it was me that was licking her head like a little kitty mamma and I’d be glad that I did it.
But 101.1 is unusual and so I just watched it as the coughing progressed. No school for two more days after break and one visit to the doctor to rule out the flu and get the look when I ask about pneumonia. I just mention that it was going around school and in fact we had gotten an email about it which means it must have REALLY been going around. But the thing Olive is complaining about is a stomach ache which included some cramps that had made her double over with pain on Thanksgiving day.
On the phone with the on-call nurse we had tried to put together the few symptoms—a cough and a fever, with an outlier of stomach cramps, and like the doctor who would see her on Wednesday, they just didn’t fit together. A stomach cramp can sometimes be strep, she did mention, but strep without any sore throat wasn’t on my radar. So I was surprised when the culture came back positive at the office on Wednesday night.
It was the progressed fever that had alarmed me. On Wednesday, the third day out of school after the holiday, I had opened my laptop and played as many episodes of whatever kids show was necessary to get a bit of a break. In my room I did a little yoga and watched my horoscope and tried to shake the feeling of being oppressed by a kid’s illness, one I desperately loved. The world outside seemed to mock me with unseasonably warm weather—cheery days full of sun in December. When I went back into the living room Olive’s fever had spiked.
I rushed her back in for an urgent visit and I got the look again when I asked about pneumonia. This time the medical professional offered to lend me a spare stethoscope to listen in for myself. It wasn’t that I was opposed to learning new things but in that moment I didn’t want to play doctor. He was a strange young person with a cavalier manner who looked up things on google and thought out loud. I preferred this to the buttoned up person we’d seen on Monday who had actually missed a throat exam and culture, or maybe I hadn’t mentioned the stomach cramps. By the time we left we had a prescription for an antibiotic in at the pharmacy and I was texting Olive’s dad with the results of the test.
Enter my next level fear. Did I remember what the allergist had said about penicillin and the family of antibiotics recommended as an alternative? Was I supposed to remember? Were these notes incorporated into the portal?
That night was the worst. The moment between an antibiotic and the antibiotic working is what everyone kept telling me was the moment just before things start to get better. But it’s actually the moment when things get just a little bit worse. The cough brought up vomit and I was changing the sheets and then in the very middle of the night the fever meds wore off and it was all so brutal. Olive ended up describing taking medicine while being sick as too bumpy of a ride and I suggested an episode of eye candy to make the landing smoother. That did the trick.
I’m still in this place after administering an antibiotic to a kid who at one point in the past two days has hid under the bed. This morning she said, from the bathroom that that it wasn’t going well in there, which is normal for taking antibiotics but not normal for the body. After I write this I’ll enter the notes into the portal and hope that someone will write me back, though I’m sure the note will just affirm that this happens. Yogurt is recommended but also dairy is not advised. Personally I’m just trying to remember that every 12 hours does not mean two times a day.
Did I mention I’ve had a kid home from school for five days in a row? You know what else I’m doing is having a blast being a teacher. There’s a story in the works about some choir going kitties who encounter creatures who are disrupting a performance. Kids are not drawn to the three part act story, I’ve read in some literature, and yet this is the assignment. Beginning: situation and character. Middle: problem and character response. End: resolution and moral. To put a kids imagination in this structure is a fun but frustrating task: asking thing to be placed into time, for characters to be grounded in space, for puns to be funny but not quite the point.
I’m wondering whether I can use a term from Unicorn Academy, Olive asked. I am supporting a mash-up but I imagine this isn’t technically correct. The word in question is: fluff hoppers so I can’t suggest an alternative.
Throughout all this the cough is persistent and not a symptom of strep. I’m wearing a sweatshirt I wouldn’t be caught dead in outside our apartment and the yoga pants I put on last night for yoga have become pajamas. I hear Gloria’s words: I think you need something for yourself, ringing in my ears and I think right now that one thing is a shower.