Dealing With A Sick Child

Jay’s been sick this last week, and still is. He had last Thursday and Friday off, and it’s now Monday, and he’s off from school again. It’s not anything that out of the ordinary, just a regular cold, but it’s a difficult time for him, and as a result, for the rest of us.

Wednesday night when we got home from work, he was complaining about a fever and he didn’t feel well. It quickly became apparent that he wasn’t going to school the next day, when his fever was going up and he started throwing up. Fortunately we still had some medicine he could take. Unfortunately, when he gets this bad, he doesn’t want to take it and will fight not to have any.

Of course this meant that for pretty much the whole night, none of us got much sleep. I think I may have had a total of 3 or 4 hours all up, and SO got about the same.

So what did we do? We tried to cajole him into taking something to bring the fever down and stop his coughing. We didn’t have much success though, and on Thursday he went off to the doctor to get something to take.

As an aside, he’s now been to the doctor three times, because he needs an MC (Medical Certificate) for every day he’s away from school, and the doctor will only give him one day at a time. At least doctor’s visits aren’t that expensive here.

Over the last four days he has taken some medicine, although not as regularly as he is supposed to. When he’s feeling a bit better, he’ll take it, but if he starts to feel too bad, he refuses. Which has put us into a bit of a circle. When he needs it the most, he won’t take any.

So, what we’ve been trying to do is to get him to take it regularly when he’s feeling better, and keep it going so he doesn’t feel any worse. Unfortunately, when he’s feeling a lot better, he doesn’t think he needs it and so won’t take it.

We’ve tried all the tricks, putting it in food, in drinks. The problem is, he’s too smart and can taste the difference. We tell him it’s just because he’s sick that it tastes different. But that rarely works. He really is too smart for his own good (and ours).

And now we’re on his fifth day of being sick and we’re still trying to get him better. If anyone has some suggestions, there are two increasing tired adults here who would greatly appreciate it.

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