Wednesday 21 March 2012

Poor Strong-Willed One

It's been quite awhile since I've made a general post; sorry about that. I'm not really sure what happened other than the busyness of life. So let's see if I can catch you up with what's been happening around here.

Kiddlet turned 7 the beginning of this month. We had Husband's parents over to celebrate with us. I let her look through my cookbooks and chose what cake she wanted. Her choice? Ice cream cake. We had a nice celebration and she was thrilled with her gifts.

Kiddlet in Grandma's birthday hat.


Last week the girls were off school for the whole week. I had approached this week with some trepidation because a week home with all the kids and no vehicle can be a very long week. However, the weather was absolutely beautiful and the girls spent a whole lot of time playing outside and that made things much easier for me.

But poor Strong-Willed One. It was not one of her better weeks. Have you ever felt like the universe was out to get you? That's what it sometimes felt like for Strong-Willed One. (Still does, as a matter of fact, but I'll get to that.) She had a good Monday. Tuesday she wakes up with pink eye in one eye; by evening it was apparent in both eyes. Thank goodness for over the counter treatments! Wednesday morning I'm combing her hair, which is something she usually does herself, and I find a bunch of nits. She was so mad! She went on for 5 minutes about how sorry she was that I have to go through all that work again and those stupid stupid bugs shouldn't have come back. She's since lost the anger and now keeps apologizing for all that dealing with nits entails. Anyway, back to the bad week. Wednesday morning it's nits. Wednesday afternoon brings a fever and sore throat. That knocked the steam out of her for the rest of the day. Whatever this virus is, and it's going around, it seems to last for about 9 days. It presents as a bad cold with a low to mid grade fever. Despite the fever, Strong-Willed One still spent most afternoons playing outside and having a good time. But by 6pm, she was done. Completely wiped out, no appetite, no coping skills left. Sunday hits and her fever, which had been averaging 100.5 F, is now 102.7 F. Now, this kid hates taking medicine. I'm talking huge huge drama, hates medicine. But she also knows that when her fever hits 102 F, she has no choice. If it stays below that and she's not in any true discomfort, I'm content to let her ride it out without using a fever reducing medication. But now it's getting serious. I have to admit, she took it pretty willingly; I don't think she had the energy to fuss about. So my poor kid spends what is her last day before school resumes laying on the couch drifting in and out of sleep.

Little Guy and Strong-Willed One watching the school bus.

And that brings us to this week. Strong-Willed One staying home from school on Monday was a given. She spent the day in her pjs, played with Little Guy and finished up some school work we had forgotten about. Yesterday she wakes up feeling fine. She still had a low fever, 99.5 F, but her appetite was back, her energy levels were up. Her fever was gone by lunch time. It looked like this would her last day home from school. Our plan for the day was to go after those nits in earnest. We'd been doing the shampoo and comb outs, but I wanted to really thoroughly go through her hair. In the morning I massaged the oils into her hair and covered it with a bag to incubate (or something like that.) As soon as Little Guy went down for his nap, we washed her hair and began the comb out. This was a much more detailed method than I've ever used previously. There were just so many nits! And you pretty much have to pull them off each strand of hair one at a time. 2 1/2 hours and we'd only managed 1/3 of her hair.  At this point I had to stop because Little Guy was squawking and needed my attention. Twice more we sat down and continued the comb out. After a combined total of just over 3 1/2 hours nit picking, I gave up and sent her to bed. I still have the last third of her hair to do. So, she heads off to bed looking forward to going to school today.

Strong-Willed One and Little Guy watching videos on my phone.

And then she wakes up at 11pm in tears because her ear hurts so much. It hurt enough that she actually took the Motrin without a fight. And she was up again sometime before 5am. (Apparently she couldn't wake me up, so Husband dealt with that one.) So here we are, the morning Strong-Willed One is supposed to return to school, the morning she was so excited about. And her ear hurts so much, and she has a temp of 99.0 F despite the Motrin in her system. She is now sleeping on the couch. I'm planning on taking her in to the ER after hubby gets home. This is getting ridiculous. I hate using the ER for things like this, but there is no way for me to get her to her doctor. The office is an hour away, Husband has the van for work, and even if I drove him in, the tires on the van are so shot that we were told not to use it on the highway. (Our new tires won't be in until Friday; apparently they are a "weird size" according to our mechanic.)

Here's hoping she feels better tomorrow!

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