Germs

Angie got the flu.  She's never been sick in the two years she's been with me, but this new cold, dry winter combined with all the bugs she's never been exposed to in her petri dish of a classroom got the better of her, and from what her teacher tells me, much of her class.  She's not been enjoying fifth grade in the U.S. much.  When she skipped a semester of 3rd grade the teacher told us what she had taught and we worked hard for three weeks to catch her up. In December, we moved to the States in the middle of her 4th grade year, and they said, "She's ten, she belongs in the 5th grade." So, she missed two semester's worth of material and this time she's feeling it.  

All this to say, when she said her head hurt and she was dizzy on Friday morning, I wasn't at all sure it wasn't just an attempt to lounge on the couch and watch TV. I wasn't sure that is, until Jon got home from work and told me we had a thermometer, which we promptly used to find out she had a fever of 102.7°. She's very sensitive in general, and I tend to believe she's overreacting about most ailments, but a temperature of + or - 103 for 4 days, is hard to call "crying wolf."

So, she didn't leave the house for five days, except to go to the doctor to get tested positive for the flu and an ear infection. You other moms with sick kiddos always seem to be raving about how sweet and cuddly your munchkins are when they're sick, but aren't you worried about them sharing their germs if they're all snuggly?  What we enjoyed more was her docile compliance.  Who is this child and how can we keep her? I felt like the pet-owners who more often than not ask if we can give them something to maintain their puppy's sedated state after surgery, "She's so calm," they say, "it's nice..."

I learned that the nursing side of mothering is one of the few that comes kind of naturally to me. I woke up in the middle of the night to check on her, medicate her, humidify her room, and wet the washcloth for her forehead. The first days, I had to rack my brain for ideas of how to comfort her when she was even too sick to watch TV, and I remembered in The Princess Bride when Colombo reads to Fred Savage. So between Jon, my mom and I, we read hours and hours of Little Women. Yesterday, my dad came over and tutored her on adding fractions for a heroic six hours.  And finally she is "well."

Last night, she looked up as she hugged me goodnight and said, 

"Thank you." 

"For what?" I asked.  

"For everything while I was sick." 

I tried to remember her sweet and sincere gratitude in that moment, when the time came to drag her out of bed this morning to return to school, and she was back to her old, very strong-willed, self. Maybe if we could just find a way to maintain her temperature at ~101°, a perfect balance between feisty and subdued......