Poor little Peanut....

I have been home for two days now with a sick little Peanut!!! She's a feisty little chickpea so it's hard to see her knocked so hard by the latest virus to hit T-ville. Yesterday she was throwing up and shooting out the other end almost simultaneously (my blogs have more than once mentioned this infliction!!) and today she's just lethargic and still throwing up anything that she manages to swallow!! It's terrifying for a mother to see her child in such a state.

This is where living in a wee town like this is such a blessing, I called the doc because I was afraid to take her there in case it was a big mess and they would have to bill me for the bio hazard team needed to clean up the nice waiting room. Also I didn't want to make her uncomfortable and sit in a car when she's obviously teetering on the brink of pukeville. So the nurse calls me back and advises me that there is a hideous virus wiping out all the kids in the area and that it's a bad one, should last not much more than 48 hours, it's highly contagious and she'll call me in a prescription that will help with the nausea. So I then call the drug store that we regularly use and they have the prescription and will deliver said medicine to my home... and wooosh it arrives within 30 minutes of my call to the doc. Isn't that the best????? I don't have to leave my house and we have Peanut's medicine and hopefully can get her onto a speedy road to recovery, I was actually praying for something like Max Warp Speed breaking the sound barrier type recovery but alas that is not the case.

When you have kids you really don't expect to feel like a helpless piece of jelly going out of your mind with worry at this type of thing. It's all baby showers and pink dresses, cutesy toys and the latest in wipe warmers. Then the reality sets in somewhere between 8 and 10 months that this is fragile little person is going to get sick and you have no control over that. With Ashley she was about three months old the first time she got sick and it was a biggie.... she turned blue when Steve was out of town and I was on my own with both the girls. We lived in Tallahassee and knew virtually no one. Her temp was so high I honestly thought the thermometer was broken (another common thing for me) and so I just drove her to the local pediatrician, it never crossed my mind to take her to the ER, I was almost paralyzed with fear and just went to the first place I thought I'd find a doc. The doc there was awesome and I trusted him implicitly, he asked if I wanted an ambulance or if I thought I could drive her to the ER, I chose to drive. I needed something to focus on and to keep me from falling apart. I don't remember much of that drive at all. They did a lot of tests on her and put her on an IV and all that stuff, she looked so tiny on the bed in the ER, I called Steve and he drove at a million miles an hour to get there. It turned out she had a UTI, yes a UTI, they didn't know what had caused her to turn blue but that was all they could find. She ended up staying in the hospital for a whole week and they found that she had a type of reflux of the kidneys and that the urine was returning to the kidneys instead or emptying into the bladder. She spent the next year on a teaspoon of antibiotic every day.

And here we are five years later, she's so strong and spunky it's really unusual for her to get sick but when she does, she gets sick!!!! I have laid there with her today and she hasn't had her usual monologue of how much she loves her friend Meredith, or explanations of her fave movie or the intricate dynamics of preschool love triangles. Nope, she's hardly said anything other than "when will I feel better Mommy?" and "I like Jello". That's about it. I am drained, Steve it out of town so I'm about to call him and ask that he come home, I hate to do that, I know his work doesn't just cope without him so he'll have to work harder later in the week. My job is such that my fine co-workers can cover for me but it does mean that they have to juggle stuff, I hate to let them down but know they understand the rigors of parenthood... did I mention I love where I work??

So dear readers, pray for little Peanut and hope this passes and she'll be back to raising hell ASAP and please thank your mothers for all they do!!!! It's definitely a labor of love.