Summer Colds

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Summer colds rank up there with broken air conditioning, a hole in the inflatable pool, and ice cream that melts too quickly to enjoy it.  In other words, it really, really sucks.

Saturday and into Sunday, little V was running a high fever.  She was listless, droopy, and clingy. Her skin was angry and hot to the touch.  She had a runny nose, runny eyes and I was keeping my fingers crossed that it was just some teeth trying to break through and nothing else. After talking to the doctor on call, who assured me it just a virus that would pass by Monday, we rode out the rest of the -ick as best we could.  Babies and wee ones can't expectorate (that's fancy talk for hock a loogie), so my job as a parent is to spray saline in those tiny nostrils to loosen the gunk so it'll slide down her nasal passages and (I guess) be absorbed by her body.  Saline spray + baby nostrils = wrangling cats.

We wrangled, V and I, as I lay an arm across her chest and tried to steady her head with my other hand. She wanted no parts of it, despite my soothing and pleading.  Telling a one year old "Let me help you" and "This will make you feel better" is pointless.  They see you coming at them with something other than food or comfort, they are out of there. Blessedly, I got her situated, and she knew that it was too her benefit because when she took her first unobstructed breath, it was like, "Ohhhhh, I see what you did there."  Of course, her short term memory is just that -- short term, because it was the same struggle for the next dosage.

Here we are on Wednesday and I've got some kind of summer foolishness percolating in my throat.  It's been hibernating since the week-end, I'm pretty sure. I'm trying to douse it with cough drops, Tylenol, and Dimetapp. I asked the pharmacist at the Rite Aid for some OTC remedies and he suggested the Tylenol, pitching my water bottle since leaving water bottles in the hot car can be a breeding ground for bacteria.  He even suggested gargling with salt water.  Which I did.  You know it's bad if I voluntarily gargle with salt water.  What I need is rest and fluids, one of which comes far more easily than the other.

I'm trying to find the silver lining in it all:  At least V is on the mend. At least the M & C didn't get it.  At least it's not strep.  Better to have a sore throat now than something worse later on in the summer.  Yeah, I'm not really doing that well at convincing myself either, but that's how I'm occupying my time between bouts of Tylenol and gargling.