Sick House Syndrome

One thing about having kids is when they’re sick and miserable, the whole house is sick and miserable.

The EDM household went through such an experience last week when the son went down with what the daycare centre diagnosed “hand, foot and mouth”. Apparently it’s quite common amongst toddlers, especially those attending daycare centres, with our centre even having a warning sign up recently so no prizes for guessing where he got it from.

I'd never heard of ‘hand, foot and mouth” myself, but I’m definitely aware of it now and quite attentive to its various symptoms and ailments. For the little man was not a happy camper at all, and with good reason. Aches and pains and sores on his hands, feet and torso were pretty bad. But it was the sores inside his mouth that really affected him and provided all sorts of misery for him and the wife and I.

You see, as adults, we get sick and we know it’s a just a case of having to ride it out and suffer the symptoms in the knowledge it’ll all be over soon. However, toddlers don’t get that and nearly every sickness they get is for the first time so it's all very new and disturbing. So last week we had the son hungry and pointing to his mouth to say “can I have something to eat?”, only to then erupt into tears when whatever food it was struck the sores in his mouth and reminded him again why he felt so lousy.

The result would be that he’d refuse to eat at all until such time as he was sooooo very hungry that he needed something in his ever-shrinking stomach. We’d find the softest food item in the pantry/fridge to give to him in hope it’d be OK, but again it would react with the little red spots in his mouth and we would be on the same old merry-go-round again of tears and confusion. The pure definition of heartbreaking I must say, seeing your child so perplexed and in pain.

Throw in the mix also the affect it has on sleep for the entire household. With good reason again, the son didn’t sleep well over the period with the pain and the hunger and the uncomfortableness. So for four or so nights it was a muddled-up sleep kaleidoscope with perhaps 20 mins there, maybe 3 hours here, another 50 minutes maybe, and then just loving any moment you get in which you have the opportunity to be horizontal and close your eyes.

Each morning I trundled off to work looking like the human undead; a zombie shuffling his feet as he walked, eyes dry and hanging low, looking ahead into the distance with a 1000 yard stare. People may have run away from me in fear, but I was too far gone to notice. Too far into the exhaustion abyss to care. Probably not the most productive week therefore in my vocational career. Quite the opposite in fact as excessive caffeine barely got me over the line and enabled me to do all the things I normally do as second nature.

Oh yes, what misery those days last week were. No fun at all and there appeared to be no end in sight. To quote Colonel Kurtz, “the horror, the horror”.

Alas, we’ve all come out the other end now. It was all about just getting through that day and hoping the next would be better. But then all of a sudden, come Sunday morning, the son had slept through the night before and woke up like his old self. Wanting to run over here, climb this and throw that. A good night’s sleep for mum and dad worked wonders also and there were plenty of exchanging looks and wry smiles in recognition of the ordeal finally being over.

And like the end of a happy fairytale, all three of us skipped along with beaming grins on our faces and joy in our hearts as a new day and era of happiness beckoned. To live happily ever after.

Or until the next time one of us gets sick anyway.

EDM.