Where did you go to 1st grade? Harvard Med?
Duke is sick. He came home from school with a low grade fever and a cough yesterday. We did what every normal set of parents do in this situation:
- Blame the school. After all they have kids with actual GERMS — how dare they?
- Feel sorry for ourselves that one of us (read: ME) will spend the day watching over a child who will be sick for all of 5 more minutes, yet the rules of school say: Fever = 24 break from YOUR kid.
- Re-arrange my whole day, with much complaining, and try on my tiarra from the Martyr of the Year Award.
What? Oh, you know you would do the EXACT same thing.
Anyway, Prince and I were taking Duke to the bathroom in prep for bed and heard the most horrible coughing sound come from my child. It wasn’t HUMAN, I tell you. Horrible.
I need to pause to say, I think I’m a very even keeled mother when it comes to childhood illnesses. I’ve never (no not EVER) called my ped’s service — well, ok, in the interest of honesty there was once but there was a VERY HIGH fever involved. I didn’t call for any of the normal stuff that makes the sitcom circuit. If I have a concern, before I make too big of a deal about it, I call the authority on all things medicine — the Queen Mum. Now, Mum is fount of knowledge and since she and I share similar personalities, she speaks my language. And I add to her credits, never once has she made me anything but calmer after talking to her.
Back to the inhuman coughing fit. I heard it. I didn’t worry about it at all. I had already heard enough to pretty much plan on hitting the doctor today anyway, so this would be something I’d add to the list. This didn’t even rate on my “Call Your Mum” meter.
Prince had a totally different reaction.
Him: You hear that?
Me: Yeah, um. Whatever.
Him: That’s bad. You think that could be Whooping Cough?
Me: Um, no. He was vaccinated for it.
Him: You sure? I didn’t think they still vaccinated for Whooping Cough.
Me (getting slightly annoyed that Prince was trying to raise my Mommy Alarm): Look, he’s been vaccinated for everything, even the OPTIONAL ones. Bascially if they offered it in shot form we got it for the boy. He’s good. He doesn’t have Whooping Cough and I’m going to the doctor tomorrow anyway — so I’ll talk to her about it.
Him: I just remember in grade school I read in the Weekly Reader that they had erradicated Whooping Cough…
Me: The Weekly READER? You are getting your medical advice from the WEEKLY READER? From GRADE SCHOOL. (beginning to laugh)
Him: Seriously, this could be a big deal…
Me: Dude, you are not seriously asking me to get all worked up about something I KNOW he was vaccinated for that you read about 20 years ago in a Weekly Reader? Did your grade school come with a degree in medicine?
Him: Shut Up….ok, fine — it is a little funny.
Post-Script: For those worried about Duke’s physical health (as opposed to his mental health living with us), he is fine. He has (wait for it) — the croup. Yup, I took him in for the Croup! Good news is that they are currently in a period to give meds for it — so it wasn’t wasted, but boy did that make Prince’s Whooping Cough diagnosis seem like an bit of a stab in the dark, huh? Well, Duke is fine and I may stop laughing sometime this month.
Weekly Reader indeed.
November 15th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Uhh, it didn’t quite go like that. I didn’t pull the whole Whooping Cough/Weekly Reader thing out of my butt… It was because as I told you there was something on the news about Whooping Cough at an area school which is what brought it to mind in the first place.
But, no we can’t mention that now can we…
November 18th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
There is actually currently an outbreak (small) at NC School of the Arts, and there were some last month in other counties in NC. And they actually tested me for it yesterday, which made me think that it really was a possibility. I won’t know until probably Monday. Oh – and the test involved was rather gross – a thin wire-type thing with a swab on the end pushed through your nose to the back – ick! Glad Duke doesn’t have WC – they don’t do much of anything to treat it either!