The prior posts – part 1, part 2, and part 3 – all explain how I got to this point. With any luck, part 5 will be the final chapter of this multi-week saga.
One step forward, one step back: just as ds is finally on the up-swing (in day care two days in a row, completely fever-free), dd goes down for the count with a late-day fever. Oh joy.
We got our third round of shots yesterday morning, with the same general timing problem as we saw at the last go-around. The joy of having a patient-centered medical home is that the care is coordinated across all the doctors YOU see…but when you get to coordinating across a family, the timing can get a little wonky. But hey – at least we didn’t have to truck around to multiple offices!
When it came time for the kids’ shots, dd wouldn’t stop covering her arm and struggling against me. As annoying as it was when the Nurse Practitioner walked out to double-check that the dosage in the syringe was accurate, it gave me an opportunity to have a heart-to-heart with dd about why the shot wasn’t optional.
As she wriggled and writhed to try to get out of my arms, I told her – gently but firmly – that we don’t yet have a treatment for rabies. And if one of us were to get sick from the bat, the doctors would only be able to help control the pain but wouldn’t be able to cure it. She asked me point blank if you would die from it, to which I responded – “Yes”. Really, what else is there to say? How much can you sugarcoat the possibility of death with a 6-1/2 year old?
I tried to give it a slight softer edge by explaining that what we were going through was far better than the alternative, and she calmed down a little. Of course, when the NP went to give her the shot, she still tried to get away from me – but I held her tightly enough that she was able to get dosed. Over the course of the next 15 minutes, on two separate floors, we managed to get the rest of us three all shot up with the rabies vax…and on we went with just another school & work day.
Well, at least everything was normal until dd took a nap before friends came over to play and have dinner. She was a bit groggier than usual, but I figured that was just from being tired. At one point, she came over and cuddled with me, complaining that she was freezing cold. DH then suggested that I take her temperature, and as I saw the thermometer’s reading climb, I knew that we were in for it. The NP told us this morning that there’s a cold going around, something that is accompanied by coughing, fever, nausea…basically everything that ds had earlier in the week. We now don’t know whether dd will end up with a similar fate, although she’s already exhibited two of the three symptoms mentioned by the NP.
And so, here we are, still not quite fully repaired (in body, as well as spirit) nearly two weeks later. Let’s hope that things are calmer by the time we get that fourth and final round of shots.
