It started a week ago Sunday. Luke began rubbing his head around his ears and tugging on his hair in a frustrated way. Shawn and I looked up at each other with eyebrows raised. He had new teeth coming in – this we knew. But this didn’t feel like a tooth thing. You get a sense for this stuff as a parent. It’s not quantifiable and it doesn’t fit in any pre-designated space on a medical chart, but there it is.
On Tuesday we went to see the pediatrician. I explained about the tugging of the hair and the rubbing of the ears. Could it be an ear infection? The doctor bustled in, shined a light in his ears, and pronounced him fine. I began to discuss teeth but she was already out of the room and off to her next patient.
At home again, I looked up everything about ears and molars in my baby book. I found nothing that silenced that little whisper inside me that said something is not right. Hair tugging and frustrated cries continued and we watched and waited.
On Thursday, he cried for an hour straight for the babysitter, who was beside herself with frustration equal to Luke’s by the time I came home. Auntie Jenny was there by this time too, having heard Luke screaming “Mom-mom-mom-mom-mom-mom-mom” through the open window.
Everyone has bad days, I told myself.
That night the fever started. Shawn and I kissed his forehead, added tylenol, and let him sleep in our bed. There was still a low fever after a long night. Shawn stayed home. They can get a fever when teething. The book said so. Luke’s didn’t get a fever when cutting the first 8 teeth though. This was different.
Grandma and Grandpa came for a visit on Friday. We went to the zoo. Luke clung to me and paid no attention to the animals. Not even the ducks. The fever bounced up and down. That evening dinner bounced up too. Hmm.
On Saturday morning, he seemed a little better, proudly tugging at the red balloon Grandma and Grandpa had brought him the day before. I went to ballet and came home. He started to slow down at lunch time, just wanted to cuddle. He fell asleep on my chest and woke up hot. Too hot. The thermometer read out 102.8º. Whoa there. Now I was reading in the baby book about fevers.
That afternoon the fever rose and fell, and each time it rose it went a little higher. Shawn called Kaiser and talked to an advice nurse each time we crested another degree. “High fevers in babies are normal,” they said. “Normal my ass,” I replied in the background. “Does he have any other symptoms?” Yes, I think, he smells different to me. When he cuddles into my chest he rests his head differently than he usually does. And he didn’t smile at the god-damned ducks. Are you writing this down on your clipboard, lady?
That evening we hit 106º and got in the car. At the ER they proclaimed him to be 106.4º and hooked him up to machines that go bing. We paced and held him in the hospital room just as we had paced and held him at home. Tylenol, Motrin, more waiting. The doctors came in and out shooting around big words like Roseola and Meningitis and then ruling them out as soon as they said them.
His temperature seemed to subside and when the nurse proclaimed him at 101.9º, our response was “Thank God.” Not something you usually think when you see 101.9º on the thermometer readout.
We took Luke home and held our breath all night as his temperature seemed alternately either too low or too high. Luke slept between us in bed and Shawn and I stared at each other over the top of his head in the darkness.
In the subsequent days, we had more doctor’s visits and blood tests. The sporadic fever lessened and then disappeared all together of its own accord, leaving behind the tell-tale red spots of Roseola, a benign kind of the measles, relatively speaking. He spent a few days clinging on to us like a speckled monkey (“a speckled howler monkey,” Shawn corrects) and at the end of a week was good as new. Truth be told, it took Shawn and I longer to recover from Luke’s illness than it did him. I imagine I’d find a new gray hair or two, should I trouble myself to look.
In this day and age, you assume that doctors can fix everything. It surprised me that all they could really tell me was what he didn’t have and all they could give him was Tylenol, like we’d done at home (admittedly they were probably using a higher dosage that what the over-the-counter box suggests).
I felt a little silly the first time I took Luke in for hair-tugging, and felt more so after the doctor pronounced him healthy and bustled out of the room and on to more important things. I shouldn’t have. I learned to demand attention for the symptoms I see, even if they aren’t quantifiable and categorizable. I also learned that even when I have the doctors’ attention, they may not be able to be extremely useful to me.
That’s both scary and comforting at the same time.