These are the only two photos I took yesterday — Monday December 25, 2017, the Christmas that will live in infamy as far as I’m concerned.
A timeline:
Thursday Night
Emma comes downstairs at some point and climbs into bed with us. She is very, very warm.
Friday
We finally get up and I take Emma’s temperature. It’s 104. She is clearly not going to school for her last half-day before the holidays, and Charlotte’s daycare is closed, so it’s a day of family togetherness. Things are pretty ok, actually. Despite her fever, Emma is acting totally normal. I take Charlotte on a walk, and Jose goes to work for a few hours.
By mid afternoon, however, Emma is deteriorating. She’s lying on the couch, covered in a blanket, staring blankly ahead. We decide she should go to the doctor, but the pediatrician’s office closed early that day. At first I make an appointment for Saturday morning, but about 30 minutes later we decide to take her to an urgent care. I take her while Jose stays home with Charlotte. We wait for almost an hour and finally see the doctor, who diagnoses her with an ear infection. I was totally expecting the flu — which has been rampant around here — and am actually quite relieved that it’s “only” an ear infection.
I mention to the doctor that she’s never had a fever that high with “just” an ear infection before, and the doctor says she probably has some sort of viral illness as well.
FORESHADOWING!
Saturday
Emma still has a slight fever in the morning, but seems to feel much better. The day turns out to be the calm before the storm. We all have lunch at Jason’s Deli, and go to HEB to pick up groceries for the next few days of celebratory meals. Shortly after we get home from the grocery store, Jose mentions that he’s not feeling great.
Sunday
Emma and I get up, leaving Jose in bed to sleep a bit more. Charlotte is still asleep! Wow! It’s unusual for her to sleep late like this! At 8:30, I finally decide to go check on her and as soon as I open her door, I smell it. She has thrown up in her bed and her face is crusted with vomit. Jose gets up to help and he cleans up her bed while I give her a bath.
We decide to proceed with previously-made plans to go over to a friend’s house for lunch, so Emma and I headed over there while Jose and Charlotte stay home. (My friend knew about all the sickness, but was up for it anyway.) We came home a few hours later and Charlotte seemed to be feeling much better, and hadn’t thrown up again. She still had a mild fever, but we managed to have a nice Christmas Eve. We made cookies and had tamales for dinner.
After rallying for the dinner hour, Jose was feeling awful so he rested on the couch while I put out Santa presents and got things ready for the next day.
Monday
Christmas Day! A day for fun and relaxing and family togetherness! And fevers and inconsolable crying, as it turned out.
Charlotte woke up with the same 104 fever Emma had 3 days earlier. With some Motrin, she perked up enough that we were able to check out what Santa brought and open presents. Jose felt awful, so we skipped our original plans to have a fancy French toast breakfast and just had scrambled eggs and toast. The morning passed quickly enough with the girls enjoying new toys and watching some TV/iPad while I started building Emma’s new dollhouse and Jose napped on the couch.
Things went downhill at naptime. Charlotte fell asleep on me, and every time I tried to put her in her crib, she started crying. I finally gave up and just let her sleep on me for the next 2 hours while I read on the Kindle app on my phone. I was hopeful that after a good nap, she’d feel better. That is…NOT what happened.
From about 3:00 until 5:00 she was absolutely inconsolable. It was clear she felt awful, and didn’t understand why or how or what or anything. She was only quiet if I held her (and only me, not Jose), and even then she periodically just sobbed. It was so sad. The Motrin finally seemed to kick in around 5:30 and anxious for some fresh air, we all walked over to the park for about 15 minutes. I had planned to just sit home with Charlotte, but when she heard Emma talking about going to the park, she wanted to go too. Whatever it took to make her feel better, at that point.
After we got home, the girls and I sat on the couch watching TV while Jose made French toast for dinner. It felt good to salvage at least a small part of the afternoon. We were able to Facetime with my parents and brother too. Charlotte went downhill again shortly after, and Emma’s patience with the less-than-ideal holiday wore out as she declared that we had done nothing fun at all for Christmas and that made her sad.
SIGH.
Around dinnertime, I started feeling the first inklings of sickness myself. By the time we got both girls in bed, I could tell I was definitely coming down with the same crud and after managing to hold it together the whole day, I had my own little crying fit. Fun times.
I took a shower, climbed in bed with my book, and was asleep by 10:00 — which, for the record, is the earlier I have gone to bed in MONTHS.
Tuesday
Today I woke up feeling like a truck ran me over, so clearly this virus is now four-for-four in terms of taking down members of our household. Charlotte woke up angry and spent most of her first hour awake sobbing like yesterday, and only wanted me again. But once the Motrin finally kicked in, she calmed down. (Biggest lesson learned in the last few days? Charlotte is like me — acetaminophen doesn’t do much, but ibuprofen does.) Jose is starting to feel better, so he took Emma to her old school for the day, and is currently at the pediatrician with Charlotte.
(Update: Annnnnd the pediatrician confirmed that it’s the flu! 2017 — the year we all got the flu for Christmas! Hooray!)
And here I am, blogging about our Christmas that turned out to be quite memorable, even if for some pretty crappy reasons.
But there were bright spots too, and at this rate we should all be healthy again by the end of the week!
p.s. I’m doing a 31 day blog writing challenge!
Wow, that sounds absolutely brutal. You poor things. And 104 is just scary. And yes, acetaminophen is useless for me too.
Ugh, so sorry! What an awful mess!
Love your blog and your daughters are adorable. I’m surprise you go out that much with sick kids. We stay home as much as possible until we have 24 hours without symptoms. It’s a recommendation given to us during Nicu times. The idea is to not spread the germs. There are lot of kids with weak immune systems and waiting the 24 hours period helps them :-). I know it’s hard with two working parents but it’s worth trying. Glad to know you all feel better now
I guess it really depends on the illness. With ear infections (the initial diagnosis for my older one), I tend to just go based on the kid, and she felt fine. If we stayed home for every cold/respiratory thing we’d never go anywhere! Ha!
If we’d known from the start that it was flu, I guess that might have changed things…but as it was, I’m glad we at least got to have a relatively normal Saturday given that the 5 days after that were a total wash.
My older daughter did go to daycare, but by that time she’d been symptom free for 3 full days. For the rest of us that were still sick, the only places we went from Sunday through the following Thursday were my friend’s house (who gave us the ok), the park (which is 100 feet from our front door and was empty except for us) and doctors’ offices.
Anyway, I definitely understand where you’re coming from and agree that not spreading germs should always be the goal, but with everything going on I feel like what we did was pretty reasonable! I’m just glad we’re all healthy again!