My poor, sick son

My poor little boy - all 17 months and 13 days of him - is really ill today. He has had a fever most of the day, and feels like he is burning up. His forehead, the back of his neck, and most of the rest of his body is hot to touch. He's very sleepy and hasn't eaten much. What he did eat today, came back up and out 3 hours ago. We tried to get a doctor service to the house to check him out but they have no doctors in our area (we don't live a rural area by any stretch of the immagination). We called telehealth Ontario - a wonderful phone service manned by nurses and the premise behine telehealth is that you call them and talk about your illness before going to a hospital emergency room. Wonderful. We've used them many times since the birth of our happy boy and the only time they suggested we go to the hospital was a few weeks ago when my wife had tummy pain.

So, telehealth suggested it was a 24 hr stomach virus and that he needs to take his tempra / tylenol every 4 hours until the fever breaks. He actually likes the taste of the medicine and when we asked him to take it this morning, we were greeted with and enthusiastic, "yeah, yeah". This afternoon, after vomit-fest, there was no way. So the nurse told us, either we get him to drink water and take his meds, or we'd have to give his a suppository, and he might need an IV for liquid.

Needless to say, he had taken his meds (under much protest), and right now, like he has for most of the day, my wife and son are curled up on our bed, where she attends to the poor guys fever and crankiness. I come up when he cries, which has been every 20-30 minutes, and check on both of them. I just need to get close to him to tell that the little furnace is working overtime and the little guy is burning up. I touch his forehead and wonder if he'll ever get better.

I guess it's something you have to deal with being a parent.

My heart just breaks seeing him so out of it, burning up, and very unhappy.



Waiting for the fever to break.