Monday, March 5, 2012

Bad mom

My kids have been sick.  It first hit my son.  He suffered mostly from fever, sore throat, cough and lethargy; ok, a little vomiting.  No big deal.  He is a great sick person.  He refuses meds and chooses to sleep;  he sleeps all day and all night.  This is especially cool since he routinely runs on six hours of sleep or less.  So tending to him consists of keeping fluids in him and an occasional temp check.   And he gets well in less than 24 hours most of the time.  Easy.

Then comes the girl.  Oh my gosh.  This is a totally different story.  She regularly needs about 10 hours of sleep to be fully human.  But when she is sick, she gets insomnia.  This allows her to give a running commentary on her every ache and pain for a good 20 hours a day.  Almost always any illness she has eventually settles into her lungs and she gets bronchitis.  I forget this little pattern until I am making the doctor appointment.  I can’t actually remember when my son last went to the doctor.  We might be looking at four or five years now.  Six? Madi goes two or three times a year, and always for that darn cough.

I am writing this on Thursday morning.  (Since this isn’t posting for a few days, hopefully all this will be only a memory by the time you are reading it! *sigh*  What a beautiful thought!)  The last night of full sleep I got was Saturday night.  Max was sick then, but didn’t require any extra care.  Sunday night IT BEGAN.  You have to read that with an ominously deep voice.  IT BEGAN.

Since then, I have been no more than ten feet from her, listening, listening, listening….  (except when I go out to shovel the drive way.  We have our first mighty snow storm going.  We could be sledding!)  Her cough is truly horrible.  It wracks her body and leaves her breathless.  Her throat hurts, her head hurts, her stomach muscles hurt from the constant coughing, her nose is stuffy and I am sure her pinky toe hurts, too.  I feel badly for her.  Who likes being sick?  But, come on!!  I am beginning to feel a little impatient at this point.  Yesterday I gave her a long ol’ speech—hey, it’s what I do—along the lines of starving children in Africa.  I told her how powerful our minds are and that we CAN make ourselves sick by concentrating on every little discomfort.  She needed to change her thoughts!

This morning I got her out of bed, bathed her in my luxury tub with gentle hands and sweet smelling soaps.  I massaged her clean self with lotion, clipped her nails and re-braided her hair.  I hoped that feeling pampered, clean and pretty would turn her to healing, along with the new meds we have from the please-bless-him-doctor.   I want to be a good mom, but I am feeling the rope unravel to very frayed edges.  Be healed, already!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking the time to talk with me!