Home Sick - updated

UPDATE: After a sleepless night trying to get a 104.5 temp down and to stay down, Lizzie was diagnosed with a sinus infection and possibly strep throat (the rapid test was inconclusive, but showed a slight positive) and is now on antibiotics. Hopefully we'll all sleep much better tonight (or maybe even this afternoon!!)

Lizzie's home sick again today. Hannah AND Lizzie were both home yesterday (a day, of course, when I had two interviews and two stories to write!) and we were all pretty miserable. The doctor seems to think they just have viruses, which turned out to be true for Hannah who is going back to school today after being fever free since yesterday at around noon.

Lizzie, on the other hand, now has a temp of 102.6 which has made her miserable enough to STOP asking me why SHE doesn't get to go to school and Hannah does get to go to school.

They don't like missing school.

This is the total opposite of me of when I was home sick from school. I loved it.

In the Garrity household you were only allowed to stay home from school if you had a raging fever or if you somehow managed to vomit at the breakfast table. Mere tummyaches or headaches or sprains, strains or Math, were not reasons to stay home from school.

Mental health days weren't invented until my contemporaries of the baby boom decided they were important for their children's overscheduled brains. My mom probably saw all five of us going off to school as HER mental health day.

So, on the rare occasion when all criteria were met for me to be able to stay home, it was heaven.

When we were home sick it meant that we had to begin the day in bed. Sick people need to be in bed. But, as the day progressed -- usually around noontime -- we could convince my mother that we were well enough to come downstairs to watch gameshows with her over lunch.

To this day I still associate the $10,000 Pyramid with illness.

If I was really, really, really lucky, Andrea the Avon Lady would stop by. I loved Andrea (her name was pronounced anDRAYa) because she told me to call her by her first name (which my mother veto-ed so I called her Mrs. Borgia) and she wore funky scarves and was somehow acquainted with Anthony Quinn. My mom bought a lot of Avon. Seriously. A lot. Well actually it was a lot of Skin So Soft but if I was home, I got tons of those tiny lipstick sample tubes Avon used to hand out.

Hannah doesn't mind being sick. She'll sit on the couch with me and watch old movies (she thinks Jane Eyre is SO ROMANTIC -- big sigh) and keeps pretty quiet. She loves school, but she also loves to relax and be doted on.

Lizzie, the little sprite who is home for the second day in a row, does NOT like to be sick. Or home. Or watching movies. She wants to be out, about, around, in, under, etc. etc. etc. You get the picture.

So she's just absolutely miserable today. I did manage to get a smile out of her when I said she could help me make pudding this afternoon while Hannah's at school but that didn't stop her from asking me (over and over and over again) why she's still sick and Hannah's all better. Or why she can't go to schol when she's not THAT sick. And what are the kids doing in school now? How about now? Okay, but what are they doing NOW?

Will Hannah miss her? Will she know what bus to get on? Will she remember to tell the teacher that Lizzie is sick? Why do her eyes hurt? What if she barfs? Why doesn't she want to eat a sandwich? What is the snack at school? How did the germs get into her nose?

And, why is she sick?

I'm hoping (praying actually) that she'll be better tomorrow, even though it is Saturday and there is no school. Because then at least she'll be able to go outside and run around the house 47 times (which I think is probably frowned upon by the medical establishment when you have a temp of nearly 103).

But I also wonder if the time will ever come when she'll enjoy the brief time away from the normal routine of school and dance and playdates.

Hopefully Game Show Network will still be showing reruns of the Pyramid.