5 Weeks and Counting

That's right. Luke has been horribly ill for 5 LONG sleepless weeks! That's over one month folks. I have decided to document each week of sickness as a separate post for time’s sake. What follows is an account of week one:

The saga began Christmas Eve with the cough and incessant snot running down his face. This made for lovely leaky-nosed pictures on Christmas morning. Also, the fever began. At this point it was only in the low hundreds. Knowing we had to get on a plane and fly to Philadelphia on the 27th, I decided to get his ears checked the day before to make sure we could still get on the plane. Sure enough, the doc gave him the OK to fly so we did.

Our first mistake was not letting him nap because we thought he would sleep on the plane. Not so. FIVE hours of my kid screaming and passengers making louder and louder nasty comments as the flight progressed. I heard a lady say, “oh he’ll tire himself out soon” to the passenger sitting next to her and I thought to myself, “You obviously don’t know my child at all.” Instead of him tiring himself out, the screaming just got louder (yeah, this kid has been crying for hours at a time since he was born. A little five hour cry fest is a cakewalk to him). After the plane landed (and 2 people told us we should get his ears checked in a not so polite tone) we drove the hour to Dan’s Mom’s house which is in the beautiful Amish country of PA. Luke crashed hard since he had been awake since 5am that morning.

The next morning, we had Christmas at Nana & Carl's and Luke was whiny and clingy but we figured he was just worn out from the flight. I refer to that night and the following 48 hours as Pukefest 2007. SO much barf from one little boy. So much out the other end too. He wouldn't drink a sip. He wouldn't pee. He had no tears. He had 104 fever. Needless to say sleep was out of the question. What do you do in the middle of the night when you are in Amish country and the nearest hospital is an hour away? You call the emergency nurse hotline in San Diego and hope someone picks up. After the nurse calmed me from my hysteria, I sent Dan out to make the hour long drive to Walmart for a humidifier, popsicles, and some rectal suppositories to bring the fever down. I seriously could've lived a full and happy life having never been introduced to the world of shoving capsules up your child’s rectum and holding them there until they dissolve. Not pretty. Stay tuned for week 2.