In Remembrance of Me: Home with a sick kid

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Home with a sick kid

I got a call yesterday about a quarter to three saying Aidan had thrown up in art class. So I had to wrap stuff up at work and sprint up the road to pick her up. I couldn't make it in time so she had to ride the bus to after care, but I got there not long after they'd gotten off the bus. I had called Miss E. to warn her to keep an eye on Aidan and when I got there she said Aidan did seem pretty under the weather. So we came home and Aidan went right to bed and slept until about 7 o'clock when I finally woke her up to drink something. THAT was a battle of epic proportions. Everything tasted bad. I tried pedialite, juice, milk...everything tasted bad and she wouldn't drink it. She wouldn't take medicine and she had a pretty good fever but it wasn't worth her making herself more sick with a screaming fit. So we finally got her to eat a little bit of Nilla Waffer and some water by telling her as long as she was eating and drinking I'd read her story, then she got ready for bed and went to sleep. She didn't sleep much because of the fever, every time I went in there she was laying there awake. Once I went in and she was on the completely opposite end of the bed. I always know when she's seriously sick because she says she's got a headache. And that's the first thing she said to me when I went into her room this morning. And she still felt wicked hot. So finally I said if she didn't take the medicine she was going to have to go to rest in her room all day. So she finally took it, which was a relief. Her fever's down not anyways. But she still wasn't eating or drinking anything. It took me all morning to nag her into eating about a third of a breakfast bar and some water. I called John and talked to him for a bit and he said that I needed to just tell her if she didn't finish her cup of water she'd have to go back to her room to rest. Well that worked, she finished the whole cup of water. Still hasn't eaten any more breakfast bar.

I feel kind of guilty that I took off work today. The have kind of grown to depend on me being there. I have taken over quite a bit of responsibility since I started. And at the same time I'm feeling like a bad mother because I'm worrying about work when my daughter is refusing to eat. I like my job, I like the people I work with, and I feel like what I'm doing matters. It helps people. And I need to work to support my family. We sure as he** can't live on what John makes. But at the same time, I really can't make my job the top priority in my life. Ultimately I still believe that we don't (or shouldn't) live to work, we work to live. And I do have earned time off. And I do my job well, so I think I've earned a little concideration when one of my kids is ill. Considering my boss took an entire afternoon to go register her adult child for college and drove her son to summer school every other morning among a plethera of other things, I don't know why I let myself feel so guilty about staying home with Aidan when she's this sick.

On another, slightly less drastic note, my new puter is dying a slow painful death. I have no idea what happened to it, but it's completely bolluxed. So John said I could call the Geek Squad guys to come out and fix it. They charge a flat fee, so they can stay as long as it takes to get it fixed. At this point I don't care if they reformat the whole stupid thing. I just want it to work again. They're supposed to come out Saturday morning. I don't know if my poor nerves can last that long. LOL

So, I'm going to go check on Aidan again, see if I can get her to eat some more breakfast bar and drink some more water. Wish me luck. Peace out.