Sick Days #1 #2 and #3

It finally happened. After nearly 16 months of life and 6 months of me going to school and Finley going to daycare, I had to take a day off to stay home with a slightly under the weather little boy. On Tuesday, I took Finley to the pedi to see if he had an ear infection. Since we missed the last one, I didn't want to take any chances and try to nip this one in the bud. Not to mention that he had goop in his eye when I picked him up from Beth's that afternoon, yucko.

Dan met us at the doctor's office for our 5:45 appointment and the doctor took one look at our patient and said, "Ok, we can start with conjunctivitis, but we'll see what else he has." Boo #1. She listened to his heart, lungs, looked up his nose, and into his ears. "Left ear looks good. Right ear, not so much. He's got an infection." Boo #2. She said she'd write a prescription for some antibiotics that will magically cure both the ear and eye situations. I asked, "Oh-so I don't have to put anything in his eyes? Phew!" Ten days of meds and that's it. He should be back to feeling like himself within 48 hours.

So I took Finley home while Dan went to pick up the prescription--boo on Walgreens for spelling Finley's name Finely. Here's Finley goofing around having a granola bar snack since he hadn't eaten much for dinner. Doesn't seem that sick, right? Looks more devious...

Except that his eyes were kinda goopy up close!

We doped him up and off to sleep he went. I called my boss and told her I would be staying home on Wednesday. So sick day #1 was spent mostly at home, except for a brief outing to the post office in the morning. After waking Finley from his morning catnap, he was quite sad and soon curled up on my lap and fell asleep! This is unheard of and clearly a sign of how terrible he was feeling, but I didn't mind the snuggling. Until my leg fell asleep, my arm, my butt, etc. So I adjusted a couple of times and he simply snoozed away. After snapping a few camera phone pictures, I managed to scoot up to the couch where we both slept for another hour. Pure heaven, aside from the fact that this all stemmed from illness.

The rest of the day was spent hanging out at home, attempting to eat, drinking lots of water, and taking his temperature with our fancy temporal artery thermometer (thank you, Costco coupon!). His fever continued throughout the day and into the night, but he pulled through. Sadly, since he can't return to daycare until he'd been fever free for 24 hours, Dan went into work and then turned right around to come home on Thursday to stay with Fin. Their day was much like the one before, lots of low key playing and tons of reading and lap time. I came home in the early afternoon and Dan did some work from home while Finley and I hung out. Poor guy was still warm to the touch despite the Tylenol and antibiotics coursing through his little body.

As the day rolled on, it became clear Finley wouldn't be able to back to daycare on Friday either. Oh help. After racking our brains for who could come over and chill out with a somewhat sick, but mostly recovering toddler for a while we were stumped. Since I had been out Monday for an all day conference and Wednesday for sick day #1, I felt bad being away from school again and Dan was quite behind after skipping work on Thursday. Oh heck. I emailed Sangwha who coaches my Alma mater frisbee team at Tufts (Dan coaches the men's team, too) to see what college chicks she knew who might be free. She came through with flying colors by connecting us with Jess, who was able to come at 7:15am to care for Finley. While she wasn't a really stranger, since she'd never met me or Finley...I was a bit nervous. To calm myself, I typed up two pages of notes about Finley and his schedule before going to bed on Thursday night.

We all slept well (enough) and Finley was still running a fever in the a.m. on Friday, but we were otherwise ready for the day. Jess came right on time and I gave her the rundown while Finley smiled away at her. I left feeling confident and managed to get through my school day (well, most of it, since I'd already planned to leave before lunch). I came home to full of strawberries and hot dog Finley, who immediately burst into tears when he saw me. "He was fine all morning, I promise!" Jess said as I scooped up my little boy. I told her that I had no doubt about that, but moms have this effect on their kids :) She said he was great and that they played trucks, did puzzles, played in the basement, and read Goodnight Moon 400 times. Sounds about right!! We said goodbye to Jess and Finley even gave her one of his hard to come by waves, sweet! Now he's napping away and I'm wrapping up this sick post, since I'm really hoping that tomorrow all will be right in Finley's world. Otherwise, back to the doctor to see what else we can do to nurse him back to health. Fingers crossed!