The plague

Biscuit and I are finally on the back side of The Plague. He and I got sick over the weekend with sore throat, cough, body aches and fatigue. It was a viral thing that just took hold and roughed us up some.

Biscuit had a fever from Saturday evening until last night. It got up to 103.5 Sunday night, so he "slept" in my bed, and Jeff slept on the couch because our guest bed is covered in Christmas presents and Biscuit's birthday party supplies, and we didn't feel like cleaning it off at 11 p.m.

Anyway, I said Biscuit "slept" because his eyes were closed and his breathing was heavy, but he crawled all over my king-size bed trying to get comfortable. I was achy and tired and so, so sleepy, but poor Biscuit just couldn't get situated. 

Biscuit started on Jeff's pillow then turned himself sideways with his head near me and his feet hanging off Jeff's side of the bed. Then he turned again, with his head toward the foot of the bed and his feet on Jeff's pillow. Then he scooted even farther down the bed and was lying across the foot of the bed. I was afraid he was going to roll right off, so I hauled him back up onto Jeff's pillow.

And then it started all over again. 

I knew at 3:30 Monday morning that I wasn't going to make it to work Monday. Biscuit and I both slept a lot Monday. Luckily, Jeff had worked Saturday night and was off Monday. So he took care of us.

Monday night, Jeff and I were trying to figure out what to do about Biscuit's fever. We had been giving him acetaminophen every 6 hours, and about 20 minutes after a dose, Biscuit would be running around the house like nothing was wrong. He'd go strong for a couple of hours, then you could see the energy slowly draining out of him. And by the time he was nearing another dose of medicine, he would be lying on the couch.

Jeff called the nurse on call at our pediatricians office to ask if she thought we should make an appointment for Biscuit with the doctor. We normally have a good feel for when we need to take him, but this virus has been really odd. It has all the symptoms of a bad cold except for the nose stuff. Neither Biscuit nor I have had a runny nose, and that's usually one of the main symptoms of a cold.

The nurse was more concerned about Biscuit's cough than the fever. And it was sounding pretty rough. So she made an appointment for Monday morning at 8:30.

We set our alarms, and as soon as I started to get out of bed, Jeff said, "How 'bout you just stay in bed and I take Biscuit to the doctor?"

Normally, he wouldn't have even asked that question. He knows that if Biscuit was at the doctor, I would be at the doctor, too. But Monday morning, I took him up on his offer. I made Jeff a list of answers for some of the questions I knew they'd ask, and I was back asleep before he and Biscuit even left the house.

Biscuit usually does really well at the doctor's office, as long as the doctor and nurses talk to him and let him know what's going on. He's good about asking questions, too.

As Jeff and Biscuit were pulling into the doctor's office parking lot, Biscuit said, "Hey, this is my doctor's office. But what doctor's office do you and Mom go to?"

"Our doctor's office is up by Home Depot," Jeff told him.

Jeff said he thought it was funny when his answer came up in conversation later.

The doctor came in and said to Biscuit, "So you've had a fever, huh?"

"Yes," Biscuit said. "But when I have a fever, my Mom and Dad give me acetaminophen."

Jeff said the doctor laughed and seemed a little surprised that Biscuit could say 'acetaminophen.'

"This is my doctor's office," Biscuit told the doctor. "But my Mom and Dad's doctor's office is up near Home Depot. HOME Depot has race car buggies, but OFFICE Depot doesn't have race car buggies. But they do have a picture of a race car driver at their door."

(And Biscuit is right, by the way. Home Depot DOES have race car buggies, and there's a race car driver who's main sponsor is Office Depot, and they have a big cardboard cutout of him standing at their front door.)

After the doctor heard Biscuit cough, she wanted to send him across the street to have a chest x-ray taken at the hospital.

Under normal circumstances, nobody (not even Jeff) would've taken my baby to the hospital without me being right there! But that goes to show how sick I was. I told Jeff to keep me in the loop, and I went back to sleep.

Jeff said the x-ray tech was really nice and really patient with Biscuit. She explained everything to him, and I wish you could have seen his face as he was telling me about how he got to see his bones on the computer screen.

He was telling my Mama about it on the phone yesterday evening. "They did a x-ray on me, Grandmama."

Trying to keep the conversation going, Mama asked him, "Why did they do an x-ray on you?"

"Because they wanted to see my bones, Grandmama," he said with that "duh" tone of voice.

The x-ray was clear, so Jeff brought Biscuit home and then headed into work.

On their way home, Biscuit said, "Dad, I liked that hospital. Can we go there again some time?"

"We'll go back there again only if we have to," Jeff said.

And let's hope we never have to!