There are some days when I am home all day and I'm perfectly happy with it. I like being home all day, getting Gavin into bed for a nap when he's tired - if I should be so lucky to get him to fall asleep, that is - and letting him play and maybe getting a few little things done around the house. There are other days when I am restless and can't stand being in the house and cast about desperately for some reason, no matter how insignificant, to leave for an hour or two. Days like today, though, are rare. Today, regardless of whether I want to be or not, I am stuck in the house.
When I first noticed the small red spots on Gavin's face a day or so ago, I paid them no notice. He's always falling and bumping his head, and often has red marks on his head and face from that. The red spots in his diaper didn't bother me either. Diaper rash, while he doesn't suffer from it often, is nothing to be concerned about. But last night I began noticing red spots like pimples on his scalp beneath his hair. And on his arm. And belly. And leg. And then I began to feel, in a very maternal-instincty sort of way, that something was not right.
I thought back to when the spots first appeared, tried to figure out if he'd eaten something funny, or if I'd eaten something funny, or if there was any other event to which I could attribute the presence of these spots on my son's body. (Interrupting myself to describe the goings on happening behind me. You cannot imagine (or maybe you can!) the happiness in Gavin's voice as he stands at the shelf where our videos are stored and pulls them off one by one. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. Bang. Plunk. All the while, he's singing happily and grunting in the way he does when he is engaged in some physically exerting task, which naturally pulling videos off a shelf must be.) Try as I might, I couldn't think of anything that may have caused the spots. He had pears for the first time a couple days ago, but pears aren't exactly high on the list of possible allergens.
So this morning, just to reassure myself that it was nothing, I called the nurse's line at our pediatrician's office and described the situation. She asked a few questions and then said that it sounded like nothing terrible, but the only way to be sure was to come in. As it happened, our pediatrician was in the office today for a couple of other sick patients, and had an open spot. Just to be safe, she asked that we come in the back entrance to avoid other patients in case it was something contagious.
We dutifully went around to the back entrance, climbed the stairs, and rang the buzzer. A nurse let us in and put us into a small exam room right by the door. Dr. P 's nurse came in and took Gavin's temperature (was normal) and asked to see the spots, then left. After a time, Dr. P came in and looked Gavin over, checking his ears and nose and throat. Then he examined the spots. It only took a minute for him to look at me and say, "Well, some of these look for all the world like chicken pox."
I was stunned and asked if it could be chicken pox even though Gavin had no fever. Dr. P said that yes, it was odd that he wasn't more sick, but there wasn't much doubt in his mind.
Huh.
Well then.
So we paid (nothing like having a receptionist come to us and getting instant service upon checkout, instead of having to wait in line and then wait while the receptionist answers the phone and searches through files and whatnot) and left to come home to our quarantine. And here we are, Gavin with his spotty botty and me with my spotty boy.
I am thankful that he is not sicker, and hope he doesn't get any worse. He slept for about three hours after we got home, a fact I'm not sure whether to attribute to him being ill or the less than ideal night he had last night. Maybe both, who knows. I am also thankful that I didn't make the playgroup I had intended to go to yesterday afternoon. It would have been the first time I made it to that particular playgroup; what a fabulous first impression that would have made. "Hi, I'm Allison and this is Gavin, and by the way my boy is contagious and all your small children are at risk just by our being here. Nice to meet you all!" Unfortunately, all the small four year old girls who swarmed all over Gavin at the play area at the mall on Tuesday - women of all ages can't help but coo and coddle all over him, it seems - are not as lucky. I just hope they've had it or been vaccinated or their Christmas is likely not to be much fun.
It's hard to believe he's got this horrid disease. In fact, the word disease is one I'm having a hard time pairing up with my baby boy. He's only ever been sick once before this, and that was a very mild cold when he was only a couple of months old. Okay, twice, but the second time was the high fever he had after his six month shots and so doesn't exactly qualify as being sick. The fact that he isn't acting very sick now makes it all the harder. I'm sure if he was hot and feverish and restless, I'd have settled right into the notion that he's sick. But little boys who impishly pull an entire collection of videos from the shelf do not a convincing sick person make. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I'll gladly take a not-acting-sick baby over one who acts as sick as a baby with chicken pox ought to be acting. If only I'm so lucky that he continues to be this un-sick for the duration of the illness; otherwise a week of being stuck in the house when I really don't want to be will be much less tolerable.
One bit of housekeeping - someone let me know the other day that the comment security function is broken. I've tried fixing it, but I don't know what the problem is. Nothing I've tried has worked so far. I'm tempted to abandon it entirely and just password protect the journal. I really don't want to do that, but if it's what it takes, I suppose I'll do it. Stay tuned for updates.
Posted by allison at December 9, 2004 02:59 PM