We’re supposed to be in Minneapolis right now, having flown there this afternoon. But instead we’re still in Cleveland, our flights most expensively postponed. Isaac is very sick.
Last week, maybe starting around Wednesday, he just wasn’t himself. Subdued. No appetite. Refusing to leave the house. On Wednesdays we normally go to his planetarium class, which he loves. But that morning he didn’t want to go. “I just want to stay home!” he insisted. I figured he was just tired from a busy weekend and a busy week up to that point and needed a day off. Late in the day I dragged him out to go sledding, thinking that a walk in the fresh air would reinvigorate him. And he submitted to it fairly quietly (although he tried to reschedule with my friend Pippa on the phone, “Not today,” he said. “Tomorrow.”) It was quite cold out and we didn’t stay out too long.
Thursday, the same thing. Wanting to stay home and just laze around. Well, I figured, this is one of the good things about not being enrolled in a school someplace. We can just stay home if we feel like it and it’s not a big deal. He was sneezing a bit but didn’t really seem all that sick. The prolonged hunger strike was a little odd, though.
Friday, he still really didn’t want to go anywhere. We cancelled a playdate and just chilled out at home. Later in the day I took him out, very well bundled, in his stroller to get some food at the market, but it wasn’t too stressful or too long.
On Saturday he spent the whole day with his grandparents in Canton. I was sort of concerned about his leaving at 9 a.m. and coming home at 10:30 p.m., but the siren song of time to do all the many things I needed to do called to me. Ben had set it all up ahead of time, and it seemed too late to change the whole plan. Also Isaac seemed up for it. He didn’t say he wanted to stay home—he wanted to go. And in fact they took it easy most of the day anyway, sensing that he wasn’t feeling 100% great. By then he had a little cough, too.
Then on Sunday, he seemed even more out of it and tired. At times I would notice that he was lying on his side and staring blankly, like one in an opium den. I figured he was just pooped from the long exciting Saturday, but late in the day he suddenly began to seem quite, quite sick. By 7 or 8 p.m. he had a racking cough and sizzling fever. He was up off and on all night in a sort of half-waking delirium, crying out “Mama! Help!” at times. Calling me, even when I was right there, and velcroed hotly to my chest all night. I didn’t take his temperature, but I wonder now just how high it was. It seemed like I could have cooked an egg on his little tummy. I gave him Motrin and it came down nicely, but as soon as it wore off, almost to the minute, it would shoot right back up. His cough was exceptionally violent too, and at times it was like just wall-to-wall coughing, with no time for breathing in between. He has an albuterol inhaler for times like these, and I dosed him with it often.
On Monday, yesterday (although it seems a long time ago), he was still plainly quite sick. I left him asleep when the babysitter came. I told her that unlike the usual rules, he could sleep all he wanted, eat as many popsicles as he wanted, and watch “I Love Toy Trains, Part 5” repeatedly. After a few hours of Christmas errands, I came home to see how he was doing. So-so. He was up and having a snack when I came in, but then began to cling to me like a limpet and refused to let me go anywhere again. I sent the babysitter home early.
At some point I started worrying about our trip today. I decided to call the nurse just to consult about flying. But when I mentioned “high fever and bad cough” she said I needed to bring him in right away. She said that there’s something out there that does that and then turns into pneumonia. That was about 3:00. By 4:00 I was walking in the door at the doctor’s office. The doctor first examined him by just looking at him without his shirt on. Somehow I hadn’t noticed just how labored his breathing was—his little stomach distending and little ribs sticking out with each breath. The doctor listened to his chest and his back carefully. Then he said, “Well, I hear something in the upper left quadrant of his lungs that I don’t like. It could just be congestion, but it also could be pneumonia. So we need a chest x-ray.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Isaac had no idea what that meant, of course, but pleaded to go home.
First we had to have a breathing treatment—the nebulizer we got so familiar with LAST time he had RSV, now almost two years ago. It’s a little oxygen mask type thing and a loud machine that fills it with mist. Isaac cried the entire time.
Then more waiting, during which I plied him with fruit leathers and read books. (So glad I have these things in the diaper bag at all times.) The x-ray place was unfortunately near the place where they often stick him to draw blood, and so this made his anxious. On the flip side, it made him also wonder if there would be lollipops.
To x-ray a small person like Isaac, they make them stand in front of this sort of easel thing. Then a huge machine looking a lot like a T. rex comes looming down. We didn’t get past the part where they tied this little tiny lead apron around his waist before he started screaming. He had to stand still with his arms out to the side. He had to stand sideways with his hands on this little thing that reminded me of a music stand. Over in the corner, there was this ominous contraption with straps and buckles, sort of a clear child-shaped mold. The lady was very kind but indicated to me that if he couldn’t stand still she would have to put him in that.
I think he could hear the urgency in my voice when I begged him to stand still. And I pointed out that if he would just stand still, then it would be all done and we could go. Although sobbing all the while (and it didn’t help that to avoid irradiating me, they asked me to stand in the hall while the x-rays were actually taken), he cooperated beautifully and they got the pictures they needed.
No pneumonia. Phew. “Just” RSV, a horrible lower respiratory virus that is worse the younger you are. (For more information about this scourge, visit http://www.rsvinfo.com/index.html)
The doctor added this oral cortisone treatment that would take down the inflammation in his lungs—and hopefully calm that awful coughing. It was hard to get some of this stuff, and as it happened I ended up at the all-night pharmacy at 11:00 last night procuring it.
So the question was, would we fly today? I held out hope that the cortisone would work a miracle (as the doctor and the pharmacist both suggested that it could) and he would be a new boy this morning. But by about 9:00 a.m. I had come down with a milder version of it too, and it was obvious that he was NOT a new boy. In fact, he was flat on his back sick. Neither of us could face a holiday travel ordeal. After paying huge change fees, we have a flight now on Thursday morning.
He’s looking pale and wan after now almost a week of little food intake. When not raging with fever, he takes on this Edward Gorey sort of Victorian-era look of pallor, dark circles under his eyes and hollow cheeks. (All he needs now is a velvet smoking jacket and a fainting couch.) He spent hours today lying on my chest and emitting this sound—something between a high-pitched wail and a sigh. He rattles when he breathes.
Hopefully by Thursday he WILL be a new boy. Himself! I miss my little sunshine boy.