A Visit From The Olden Days: Sick Kid Update

Little man. I wish I could squish him now.

So after all the puking, LE went on to just be regular sick, like a flu. I skipped work and had the rare privilege of looking after him while he was adorable cuddly sick. One time after Pirates of the Caribbean I was all, "Hey, why don't you go to sleep for a little while?" and he was all, "Ok," and he went to sleep for a little while. A whole bunch of times I held him on my lap and rocked him and he went to sleep as though he's not getting entirely too big to sit in my lap.

I made the chicken soup. It was awesome. LE ate a bit of that and some other stuff, and he was drinking stuff so it seemed he was going to be okay. His dad came and got him Saturday and I told him to go ahead and take the boy to the doctor because he still had a fever and what the hell. His dad hasn't paid child support in a year, so the least he can do is take the boy to the doctor, and a fancy private one at that.

He probably didn't really say that.

The doctor gave not one, but two kinds of antibiotics. Apparently they tasted really gross. I've tasted his antibiotics before and they're fucking awful. So bad you want to spit like 20 times and wipe your tongue with kolonya. On the second day of the antibiotics, LE didn't want to take them. BE told him he'd have to go to the hospital and get the serum with the needle and everything. LE hated the medicine so much he puked it up and was all, "Give me the needle, bitches."

So that's what they did. By then, it was clear the rash he had wasn't heat rash. The doctor got us all freaked out it was measles, blaming the Syrian refugees. After extensive blaming from the MIL about the boy getting sick, I got all worried the measles were indeed my fault because he hasn't had his last round of vaccinations. I've tried several times with doctors, but they just shoo me off assuring me that they'll do the vaccinations at his school for free, so why pay for them? And since I haven't gotten any child support in a year, I'm like, "Seems reasonable." But they haven't done them at school yet.

The black thing is a temporary pirate tattoo that hasn't come off for like two weeks. Elementary school kid lore maintains that temporary tattoos are sort of haram and also give you cancer. It could be the haram-ish tattoo that made him sick. 

MIL knows everything is my fault. I'm not even a real mother, letting that poor neglected kid run around naked and go to bed early. Other things that are my fault include Syria and that missing plane and the Star Wars prequels, all three of them. My main problem is that I have a multitude of other concerns in my head and my stigmata rarely leak. It weighs on me and I'm sorry.

Fortunately, it's not measles, but get this: it's scarlet fever. SCARLET FUCKING FEVER! Seriously? Do they even have that anymore? What the hell? Even with all of my neglect there's no way I could have caused a disease from 1850 to strike my house. I should have tied my corsets tighter. I should have polished my spats and ivory tipped walking cane more carefully. I need a snuffbox. We have a total lack of spittoons around here. And where's my orphan worker?

I need me one of these.

So I dutifully informed everyone-- LE's school, his pre-school, his friends he's played with in the last week, a former student/FB friend who helped organize the kids' fair LE went to the day he got sick, and I even sent an email to the faculty listserv in case any of their kids had been at the fair (which was held in the gym because of rain) -- and then I promptly got on with life.

Scarlet fever, when it's not a steampunk illness, just needs a whack of penicillin. LE got his last night and felt great and demanded Turkish breakfast on the spot, which of course was dutifully provided, leaking stigmata and all.

And of course I went and researched it, hoping scarlet fever had some romantic famous people connections, like syphilis and tuberculosis. In addition to both my grandfathers, here are some famous people who had scarlet fever:

Olden days illnesses are fucking awesome.

Well, no one actually. I checked about Helen Keller and Wikipedia says it was either scarlet fever or meningitis that got her. And Mary Ingalls of Little House on the Prairie fame? Turns out it was probably also meningitis that made her go blind, but the book editors changed it to scarlet fever because that was more understandable for people. The dumbing down of books has been happening for a long time.

So scarlet fever is still a thing. LE is on the mend. MIL lacks empathy, but it would be silly of me to expect otherwise. At least I can stick her with the boring part of kid sickness that involves making a kid who feels fine stay inside and not have any fun at all. Plus I can do my day job and my night proofreading job and maybe get in one or two cool nights out before all hell breaks loose on May 1.

Which is sure to happen. Wait for it.