A Difficult Evening

For the first time in a long while, I'm battling a fever. It used to be that I would pretty regularly get very sick for at least a week or so in the wintertime (one of the worst bouts was actually for 3 weeks after our wedding in 2001, complete with ongoing high fever and painful mouth sores), but somehow, since coming to KIPP, I have managed to avoid a real winter illness. Until now, apparently. I started to come down with a painful cough on Sunday night, and by last night, my fever was up to 101 as the girls were going to bed. I made the mistake of telling Chris in front of them, and they both were very concerned. "What's a fever? What does that mean? Are you really sick Mami?" We then didn't hew exactly to the usual bedtime routine, because I was trying to finish up cleaning the kitchen and feeling more feverish by the minute, and unfortunately our inconsistency bought us 2 hours (!) of Wendy not wanting to go to bed. She didn't express it directly, but I'm sure my being sick made her anxious. After an hour and a half of her following me from our bedroom to the living room, with no reasoning or cajoling working at all (I even sunk to the depths of saying that Santa wouldn't be able to come if anyone in the house was sick, me or her! Chalk it up to a rising fever and rising frustration.), finally I went into her room and lay on the bed next to Fer who had already fallen asleep and pretended to fall asleep there, perched on the edge of their bed and shaking with fever. Wendy followed me there a few minutes later, and after about 30 minutes and one false alarm, finally fell asleep. The one image that helped me last through the wait was that of the cholera victims in Haiti -- I had just been reading a blog of a family that runs a clinic there and they have cots and cots crowded with desperately ill people coming for medical care. Even though I was very sick and uncomfortable, obviously it doesn't compare to the situation there, and I did have my own comfortable bed to go back to eventually. Once Wendy was safely asleep, I went back to bed and shivered under 4 blankets with my fever up to 103 until it finally broke and I was able to go to sleep.

Today, more of the same as far as the fever, unfortunately, but we did get the girls to bed tonight with no incident. I pretended better health in front of them, and that seemed to help them feel calmer. Hopefully I won't be pretending for long and will actually be better soon!