Tag: sick kids

I Don’t Have Any Answers

My mind has been reeling the past two days, watching the news, watching what everyone has to say about the news. And honestly, I don’t feel like talking about it. The press has covered it Ad Nauseum, almost everyone I know has voiced an opinion. (I’m not saying that’s a bad thing!) As I thought about writing my blog today, I thought, well, I should address what is happening in the country. Give my opinion. And I have finally realized that I really don’t want to do that. 

First, I feel like my opinion is half-baked at best. I am bewildered, torn, and kind of feel like I’m in the middle of a blizzard of information and ideas. I don’t know anything and I don’t have any good thoughts to share at the moment. 

Second, I really don’t feel like I have a finger on “What does the Bible say concerning these matters?” I am still searching and praying. I don’t know. 

So, let’s talk about how we’re doing with just life in general right now. 

Do you realize that we just finished a month and half of celebrating: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years? And did you know that it’s a common phenomenom that when you have an emotional high, it’s followed by an emotional low? I for one am sitting nice and firm in that low. My kids went back to school this week and I started homeschooling again. The kindergartner was not happy to start homeschooling again. It’s taken me to Thursday to get him through a normal school day in a normal amount of time. And then this afternoon I got the news that “due to the possibility of inclement weather” all the kids will be home for virtual school tomorrow. 

Wonderful.

Tomorrow I also have to take my 7th grader to get a covid test because he is having surgery on Monday morning. Something that just got scheduled this week. (I’ve never had this doctor’s office move so fast in getting a surgery lined up.) It’s an old complaint. Fluid in his ear causing hearing loss. He already had six sets of PE tubes when he was little. We’ve had a good long stretch of no problems, but now it seems it’s back. 

Our family has managed to stay healthy through all this Covid junk, but it’s concerning to me to hear, every day it seems, of more people I know who are sick with it. My daughter is going to bed right now and told me that she is cold, even though she is wearing really warm pajamas, socks, gloves, hat and is under a blanket. All I can think is that she’s getting the chills that come before a fever. And I just feel tense, wondering if the three days back at school was enough for her to pick up something that will now spread through the whole family. Who knows. We’ll see. And, as I think about it, if this daughter ends up getting sick, it will probably affect the other child’s surgery. Uggh. 

Emotionally I’ve been struggling with feeling like a failure. The old voices are speaking loudly in my head. 

So, here I am, just hanging on, and then the news explodes and everyone’s social media explodes and I get all caught up in it. And I realize. I can’t do this. I can’t let the drama of this dysfunctional country keep me yo-yo-ing up and down. I’m already having a hard time without focusing on what’s happening in Washington D.C. 

Someone suggested on their Facebook that now was a good time to get off the social media and focus on Jesus and His Kingdom. And I have to agree. I need wisdom, discernment, love, patience, power. I’m not going to get any of that by focusing on the world. I will get that by turning my focus back on God. Repeatedly. Over and Over again. Habitually. 

I’m not saying that I’m going to just ignore everything that is happening in the world. I live in the world, my personal life is affected by what is going on out there. But, if I take a look at how much time I am devoting to every activity in my day, social media and the news should not be taking up the majority of my time. (And I can hear my husband in the background saying, AMEN!) 

So, that’s where I’m at. Post-holiday blues, regular stresses of taking care of lots of kids, trying to resolve to spend less time on the internet, more time in real life, more focus on the Real King. 

I’ll talk to you all later. 

Observations on SLOWING THE SPREAD

We have had an interesting couple days. On Sunday morning I had three children complain of sore throats. Since then I have rode the roller-coaster of wondering whether they could possibly have gotten THE VIRUS. Could we be CONTAGIOUS? My husband is still working and we wondered what we should do about him going to work if there was a possibility we were actually SICK. 

 

I spoke to the nurse for our insurance’s call line. She said there was no way of knowing whether we had strep, flu, covid-19 or some other virus. We waited 24hrs. My husband took a day off work. In that time one kid got completely better, another kid developed a cough to go with her sore throat and the other had a fever to go with her sore throat. I looked on our county’s Health Department Website and it said if you suspect you are sick, call your doctor.  I called our Pediatrician’s office and spoke to the nurse. Yes, she said, those could be possible early signs of the covid-19, but all they could do at their office was rule out flu and strep. If I wanted, I could go visit a walk-in clinic to rule out strep and flu instead of visiting my pediatrician who is located at UT hospital. I asked her what she thought about my husband going to work if we didn’t know what our kids had. She had no answer. I asked if there was any protocol we were supposed to follow. She said, if you are sick stay home. But as far as other family members who are working? Well, that’s your own call. 

 

I went back to the Health Department’s Website. They had a phone number you could call. I called and they said that they were looking specifically for fever and cough or fever and shortness of breath. Wheww. We didn’t have that specific combination. All was well. 

 

Then later that day I asked my daughter how she was doing and she said she was feeling achy all over and her chest was tight and she needed to use her inhaler. Great. Now we had more symptoms and they were the ones the Health Department had said they were looking for. (The other daughter’s symptoms had turned into something that was obviously allergies.)

 

Now it was Tuesday morning. My husband took another day off work. I had checked on my daughter several times during the night, taking her temperature, but I realized that the thermometer that I had bought at the store (the very last thermometer in the store) was not working. It consistently was saying that each person I checked had a temperature of 96 degrees. Good grief. 

 

I called the Health Department number and told them my daughter’s symptoms and her history with asthma. The lady on the phone said we should probably get tested. She asked what insurance we had (State Health Insurance) and she gave me the name of three walk-in clinics we could visit and their phone number. I called each walk-in clinic and all three said they did not accept our state insurance. One of them said that my pediatrician could probably give me a referral to a place that could test. So, I hung up and called my pediatrician again. I spoke to the receptionist who makes appointments and she said I had to talk to the nurse to schedule sick appointments and sent me to a voicemail where I had to listen to a 5 minute long message before I could leave my information. 

 

We finally got an appointment scheduled, drove to the hospital, went through a checkpoint where my daughter was handed a face mask and we were given name tags to show we had been screened. We walked through the nearly empty halls to our Pediatrician’s office and got checked in, being very careful to touch NOTHING. After the nurse had collected the samples she needed to test for flu and strep, I talked to the Nurse Practitioner. She explained that they could test for covid-19 but it would take 14 days to get the test results back and our entire family would need to self-isolate while we waited for those test results. It was up to me, did I want to get her tested? Yikes. We sat and stared at each other. What a crazy predicament. She knew it was crazy. I knew it was crazy.

 

My question is, how on earth are we supposed to be containing the spread of this virus when we apparently have so little tools to do so? When you read about the steps they took in Wuhan, China to stamp out the spread, and then compare it to what we are doing, we have no right to be amazed that our numbers have already exceeded those of China. Here in the US, the average citizen isn’t sure how to proceed if they get sick, and there doesn’t seem to be any organized system to get answers. If you are prepared to get on the phone and track down answers, you will eventually find out what you need. But there are a lot of people who would struggle to do that. People who don’t have internet access to look up the info they need, or don’t have phone service, or don’t have a personal doctor they can call. These aren’t made up people. I know them personally. 

 

And then, when you throw money into the equation: you can get tested and automatically miss two weeks of work, or you can just hope that you don’t actually have the virus and keep working…It is not an easy decision to make. And for some people, that decision will mean the difference between having food to eat, keeping phone service, starting the long downhill slide into eviction…There is very little motivation to get tested or self-isolate. 

 

The good news is that my daughter has Strep Throat. For which we are rejoicing. 🙂 I can treat that. My husband can go to work without worrying about spreading it around. I know how to deal with strep. (I do have to ask, how on earth did a kid, who has only seen four people besides her family in the past month, get strep?) 

 

I have to admit though, I’m not feeling a lot of confidence in our ability to slow the spread. 

My Tank is on Low

Some days you are Spiritual and Aware, and marching along, knocking problems off your path right and left as you confidently push forward. And then other days, you are huddled in a corner in your room, yelling at kids to go away and just give you TEN MINUTES FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!!

 

In the past 60 seconds I have told the five year old to stop talking about “butt cheeks”, told the three year old to get his biscuit out of my bedroom and take it to the table, and told another child that it’s not appropriate to kick people. 

 

I’ve just told a little girl that No, she can’t store her artwork in my window sill. And if you leave it on the floor of my bedroom, I WILL throw it away. Please stop winding up my music box. Stop wrestling on my bed. Have you finished your chores?? Did you do your homework? Why are you eating a biscuit on my bed? Go finish your chores!!!

 

It’s that crazy time of day when I’m supposed to be making supper, the kids are supposed to be doing their chores and their homework while I cook, and my husband is supposed to arrive home sometime in the middle of all this. Hopefully after the house has been tidied up. And of course, this is the time of day when everyone needs my input on something. 

 

And I have been running full-steam since 6 am this morning and my nerves are feeling rattled. I have a pot of soup cooking and so I had hoped to sneak away for TEN MINUTES and maybe write a bit while everyone busily did their business. Right. 

 

Today I have dealt with sick kids staying home, a child at school getting hives, talked to therapists and social workers and doctors, chauffeured my daughter to work, cooked a lot of food from scratch because I need to go grocery shopping, and I’m out of all the quick easy stuff. I’ve arranged complicated plans for tomorrow, paid a giant pile of bills (Yay!), took care of banking business with a new teller at the bank who happens to take three times as long as normal, and looked up recipes for soup and how to treat hives. 

 

Right now I am feeling frazzled and tired and wondering how I can shed off some of my responsibilities to lighten the load, and at the same time, trying to not get discouraged. 

 

So, what’s the difference between today and say, two days ago? 

 

I think I need recharging. 

 

Time changes, major crisis, sickness, kids crawling in my bed at night cause they’re scared…it’s all been draining my resources. I need to refill the tank. 

Hmmm. I’m thinking I need a date night Thursday night. That sounds like a plan. A light shining at the end of the tunnel. Something fun and NON-kid to look forward to. So, my dear husband, who is reading this blog right now…I am going to set up the babysitting, you’re in charge of planning the evening. 🙂 

There. I’m feeling better. 

 

Oh wait..Thursday won’t work…Friday? Saturday?

 

Grace in a Mother’s Hands

A virus has come to visit our house. It’s ferocious and mean and seems to be jumping from one person to the next like a grasshopper. I’m in day three of nursing sick children. It’s made me think about how vital physical contact is to the job of motherhood. Nobody ever really mentioned that, when I was pregnant with my first. I heard all about sleepless nights, temper tantrums, nursing problems, potty training, when to start solid foods…I even heard all about the emotionally draining years of the teens. But, nobody ever talked about how much I was going to use physical touch in order to be a good mom.

My two year old is very sick. Call the doctor kind of sick. The nurse on the phone said take him to the emergency room. I asked what I could do at home first before I took that step. She suggested Pedialyte. If it worked, I should be ok at home, if it didn’t work, go to the hospital for dehydration. Good news, the Pedialyte has been working so far. I’m keeping a close count on wet diapers, keeping track of how many ounces of fluid he takes, what time he last drank something. The problem is that everything just keeps coming out, both ends. Let’s be honest here. That’s gross. Throw-up is disgusting. It makes me want to sympathy-throw-up. Nasty diapers that smell like toxic waste are also disgusting. It also makes me want to run away. But what does a mother do? She picks up the sick child, bathes him, dresses him. Holds him in her arms, rocks him, murmurs comforting words. Lays down on her bed with him till he can go back to sleep. He snuggles up against his mama, taking comfort in her physical presence.

My four year old was also sick, though not with the same intensity as the younger one. I put him on my bed in the afternoon and he slept. Occasionally I would go in and touch his head to see how hot he felt. Kiss his hair, rub his little back. He was still sleeping at bedtime so I made a pallet on the floor next to my bed and laid him there so I could help him in the night if he needed it. He woke up once, restless, achy. I rolled over, put my hand on him and he settled down and went back to sleep.

The eight year old got sick too. I put her to bed in her own bed, but told her that if she needed me in the night she could come lay on the pallet that was still next to my bed. She showed up around midnight. I reached my arm out and patted her on the back to let her know I was there if she needed me. She went back to sleep, comforted at being close to her mom.

Usually, sickness is an indicator that we need to stay away from someone. Oh, you’re sick? Here, let me move about five feet away…how contagious are you?? I tell this to my other children. Your brother is sick, please don’t go near him. The baby is sick, don’t kiss or hug him. But Moms have different rules. Your son is sick. Pick him up and hold him. The baby is sick. Cuddle him close, murmur love words against his head while he sleeps in your arms.

How do mother’s learn to do this? I’m going to guess it’s partly instinct and, if you were fortunate, partly remembering what your mom did for you. I remember my mom’s cool hand on my hot head, placing wet washcloths on my forehead while I struggled through some harsh tropical sickness. I remember her making potato soup for me, her hands stroking my hair while I tried to eat a couple bites. I remember, as a child in Haiti, when I was very, very sick, we were far away from any hospitals and the medicine wasn’t working. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, my mom’s hand on my head while she quietly, fervently prayed that God would heal me. Healing from a mother’s touch.

And I carry it on to the next generation. You’re crying? Come sit on my lap. You hurt yourself? Let me kiss it. You’re sad? Let me hug you. You’re sick? Come, climb in my bed, I will take care of you.

May this urge to use our hands, arms, bodies to administer love and care, may this never cease. May it pass on to the next generation of mothers, and the next, and the next. Full-body mothering. Grace in a tangible form.  

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