Today was going to be a bit of a “day off” for me. Originally I was going to take August to his first baseball game. I figured a day game during the week would be a little crowded than on the weekend, as well as allowing us to get home before bedtime. The plans, however, were in the process of changing on Wednesday.
While Ciaran and Déla were on the mend from the previously documented issues of illness, Laura and I were beginning to not feel so good. Wednesday at 2am I woke up with full body aches and couldn’t get back to sleep. I spent the day not only feeling sick, but overly tired as well. As the day progressed, it hurt to simply wear my shirt, but at least the youngest two were feeling better.
My hope was to get a good night’s sleep and be well rested for today. That, however, was not to be. August woke up a little after 2am – and vomited. After taking care of things and cleaning up, we put August back to bed. About 30 minutes later, August came back in to our bedroom to let us know that he had thrown up again. This would continue on and off until about 5am.
Yeah, my plans of getting a good night sleep were dashed, but more importantly, August was setting a new record for vomiting. Laura held the previous record when she was pregnant with Déla, but as August surpassed 15 times in less than 12 hours, it was becoming more and more clear that something needed to be done, so Laura took him to the emergency room.
He’s alright, but it’s been a very long and stressful day for all of us. There isn’t a formal diagnosis, but the doctors said it appears that August has something called Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (which is like a severe form of stomach flu and sounds scarier than it is). Basically we have to keep him from getting dehydrated and let the virus run its course.
I could go on about the feelings of helplessness regarding a sick child, or the terror of having a sick child when the parent is also sick, but I haven’t found any interesting way to write about it. Swim lessons and other appointments for tomorrow have been canceled. We have a prescription for this pill that makes it so that he doesn’t throw up, which I could have used on a certain St. Patrick’s Day well over 20 years ago, but that’s another story. As long as we can keep fluids down for the next 24 hours (measured amounts at regular intervals) we can move towards feeding him tomorrow.
As for the planned day off, well, it obviously took a much different path than I had planned, but the result was essentially the same. No “work” was done, other than the job of being a parent to a sick child. As any parent can tell you, it’s one of the scariest jobs one can have.