{"id":610,"date":"2013-12-19T00:29:05","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T05:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/?p=610"},"modified":"2013-12-19T00:29:05","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T05:29:05","slug":"a-pox-on-my-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/?p=610","title":{"rendered":"A Pox on My House"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pet<\/a>“You know, I don’t think I’ve seen an actual case of chicken pox in ten years.”<\/p>\n

That’s a quote from the doctor at the walk-in clinic we visited Sunday night.<\/p>\n

28 hours earlier: The girls and I visited “Dickens of a Christmas<\/a>,” the annual Christmas festival in downtown Franklin, where we live. (Every small town has a Christmas festival where people dress up like characters from A Christmas Carol<\/em>, right?) About halfway through, Lily got very <\/em>tired and a little sniffly. I assumed this was because it was about 35 degrees outside.<\/p>\n

24 hours earlier: Lily said she wasn’t feeling very good. I felt her forehead, and she seemed to have a pretty bad fever. I couldn’t tell for sure, since my thermometer was among the 25% of my possessions still in boxes… somewhere in the house. But I gave her some Tylenol and we took it easy that night.<\/p>\n

12 hours earlier: Lily seemed fine the next morning, but we played it safe and stayed home from church. By lunch, she was her usual energetic self, so I didn’t worry about her brief fever the night before.<\/p>\n

6 hours earlier: Lily mentions something about a bug bite on her neck. Sure enough, there’s a little red dot visible that itches her. A bug bite seems a little odd, given the 35-degree weather, but I don’t worry about it.<\/p>\n

1 hour earlier: The girls and I get home from driving around our new neighborhood looking at Christmas lights. (Dear Fieldstone Farms, you need to step it up. Go visit McKay’s Mill if you need inspiration.) Lily says that her bug bites–plural–are itching. Multiple bug bites? I ask her to lift up her shirt.<\/p>\n

Dozens of red dots. All over her chest. And… her back, too. I put in a phone call to her mom, immediately. Minutes later, we’re heading out to the door to the walk-in clinic.<\/p>\n

“You know, I don’t think I’ve seen an actual case of chicken pox in ten years.”<\/p>\n

The doctor brings in an intern to look at my daughter. I’m thinking that ten years ago, the intern was Lily’s age.<\/p>\n

It turns out, a little congestion followed by a brief fever is classic chicken pox onset. That explains Saturday. What comes next? Itchy red dots all over. Calamine lotion. Squirming and complaining when the calamine lotion comes out. Oatmeal baths. Benadryl. Tylenol. An uncomfortable little girl watching cartoons on the couch. A big sister exiled to rooms that don’t contain chicken pox, since she hasn’t been vaccinated either. Mom and me juggling our work schedules so that one of us can be home with Lily every day this week.<\/p>\n

You know, the usual.<\/p>\n

Lily’s doing better today. Only one bout of itchiness all day, and that’s without the Benadryl. In fact, her mom tells me that she was an angel, playing contentedly by herself almost all day. I’m hoping tomorrow plays out the same, since I have three work-related Skype calls to make from the kitchen table. I’m also hoping that Hannah doesn’t get chicken pox… and that we can get her vaccinated in the near future!<\/p>\n

Reasonable people can disagree over the merits of the chicken pox vaccine. Most parents have their kids vaccinated, thus the doctor’s inexperience with real, live chicken pox. Reasonable people can also agree<\/em> that one downside to not having your kids vaccinated… is that they might get chicken pox. I remember having it when I was six. Well, I remember the itchiness and how much I didn’t like calamine lotion. It was no fun for me then, and it’s no fun for Lily now.<\/p>\n

But we’ll make it.<\/p>\n

Image: “Pet Rooster<\/a>,” Thomas Hawk, Flickr (CC)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“You know, I don’t think I’ve seen an actual case of chicken pox in ten years.” That’s a quote from the doctor at the walk-in clinic we visited Sunday night. 28 hours earlier: The girls and I visited “Dickens of a Christmas,” the annual Christmas festival in downtown Franklin, where …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","column","twocol","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":614,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}