Worried sick...

Here the lesson I've learned this past week: you cannot will away the winter sickies. At the beginning of last week, after a week of wellness, I was thinking, "Ah, see? It's spring! We've made it! We've had every virus we can get for this year, so we're safe at this point - homefree!"

You can imagine what happened next. I've spent the past several days nauseous with worry about my David. Here's how the week played out:

Sunday: unusual diapers

Monday: got some shots at his well-visit

Tuesday: low grade fever, which I thought was due to the shots or possibly the 4 molars he seems to be cutting

Wednesday: felt a little warm, but not warm enough to worry about

Thursday: by the afternoon, he had a fever over 101. He was also pretty fussy, and I was starting to wonder if this was more than teething.

Friday afternoon: fever in the neighborhood of 102, and not controlled by ibuprofen. I put him to bed knowing his medicine would run out within a couple of hours. I left for the grocery store.

Friday night: as I got back from the store, David was waking up crying, and I went to give him some more medicine. I picked him up and panicked - I have never felt such a hot temperature. The thermometer read 104.8. Brian put the cold food in the fridge while I called the pediatrician to see if we needed to go to the urgent care. But he talked me down off the ledge and said to bring him into the office in the morning if he still had a fever.

Saturday morning: fever still 104. Took him into the peds' office. (do kids have this switch that brings their temp down 4 or 5 degrees when they set foot in a doctor's office or what?). They said he must have a virus, maybe like Roseola, that causes high fevers, which tend to spike at night. So I calmed down quite a bit.

Saturday afternoon: while cruising around, David fell and hit his head on the table. It was a fairly hard hit, hard enough to leave a bruise on his temple. Because of the recent media about silent head injuries (google "richardson saves life"), Brian and I spent the next two days watching him closely for anything unusual.

Sat. night: more fever, fussiness.

Sunday: finally no fever, but cranky and fussy as all get out. A couple of crying jags caused further worry.

Sunday night: I went in to check on him before I went to bed and thought he was breathing hard. Went to bed with a bunch of questions about asthma in my mind. Will he wake up crying if he's having breathing trouble? How will I know if he needs help? Between that and the bruise on his head, I was awake until 1:30, tossing and turning and just...worried sick.

Today: he's fine. No fever. No rash (guess it wasn't roseola). Bruise looks better. Breathing normally.

So where did all of that worrying get me? I'm in the same place today that I would have been had I not worried a bit. But no matter how rationally I understand that, I can't get past it. I spend a good bit of time imagining all the obstacles and barriers that could possibly stand between my kids and their own healthy adulthood. Is this normal or irrational fear? Am I destined to have these thoughts until they're 18? 30? 60?