Back-to-School Blues

“My stomach hurts,” Sophie whines, picking at her bowl of oatmeal.  Then, she bends in half, clutching her stomach and starts screaming, “OW! OW!” at the top of her lungs.

One would think her appendix was exploding. 

I stand there, waffling: 

On the one hand, we have just had another long weekend, due to the 900^th snow day this winter.  Both Kevin and I stayed home, each taking a turn playing with Sophie so that the other could work.  We baked cookies.  We played board games.  We snuggled in front of the fire and read books.  Sophie was in heaven. 

On the other hand, Kevin just had a stomach bug a few days ago.  I was sick the week before that.  Sophie doesn’t usually complain of illness.  And she isn’t eating…

Is she sick or is it the back to school blues? 

Kevin walks in, grabbing a banana before heading out the door.  “She’s fine.  Send her to school.”  He says, kissing me on the forehead.  And he’s gone. 

Sophie gives me a pained expression, “Mo-om!  Please can I stay home?”  I have a client scheduled at 9:00.  It’s 8:20 right now.  I have exactly 10 minutes to get her out the door, so that I can drop her off at school and beat my client to the office. 

It’s likely the back to school blues.  But what if it isn’t?  What if she’s really sick and I bring her to school and she starts barfing.  And what is her teacher going to think of me, dumping Sophie off in her classroom, while she’s carrying on like this.  I’ve been a teacher.  I know what they are going to whisper behind my back:

Worst mommy ever. 

It doesn’t help that I’ve got a really messed up relationship to illness.  In the 8^th grade alone I missed a whopping sixty days of school—one third of the school year. (I still have the certificate of commendation that my best friend made for me, congratulating me on this feat.)  Most years, before and after, I was absent from school for weeks at a time.  Bronchitis.  Sinusitis.  Long, lingering, upper respiratory infections that seemed to take on a life of their own.  To this day, I am uncertain whether I was truly sick, a skilled malingerer, or just deeply anxious and depressed. 

I can remember the anxiety that grew with each passing day.  It would start out fairly innocently.  I’d be out for a couple of days, with congestion and a terrible cough.  My mother would take me to the doctor, who’d give me a pill and a written excuse, validating the illness.  My mother would coddle me, making Lipton tea and playing gin rummy with me in the afternoon.  And I wouldn’t get any better.  One week would turn into two, two into three.  Meanwhile, the make-up work would mount—piles of textbooks would sit untouched on my desk.  Due dates would come and go.  Entire units would be reviewed.  Tests would be given.   The longer I stayed away, the more impossible it seemed to return.  Despite my loneliness.  Despite my boredom.  I was never quite sure where the illness ended and my anxiety began. 

My husband, on the other hand, rarely missed a day of school.  He graduated from high school with perfect attendance.  A couple years ago, he actually did go to work with appendicitis.  A colleague made him go to the hospital just before his appendix burst. 

Back in the kitchen, I tell Sophie, “Honey, I’m sorry your stomach hurts.  Maybe you’re just nervous about going back to school.” 

“Mommy, please?  I want to stay home with yooooooouuu.” 

I want to take her seriously, but I don’t want to feed into malingering.  Hoping that Kevin is right, I usher her out the door and into the car.  Once at her school, I share my dilemma with her teacher, who promises to keep me apprised of Sophie’s condition.  She sheds a few real tears as I head for the door. 

Oh, the guilt. 

Later I get a call.  She’s been listless all morning.  Didn’t eat her snack.  Has been asking for me.  I wrap things up and rush over to the school.  When I get there, she’s running around with her friends, smiling. 

“Mom?” she begs, “can’t I stay a little bit longer?”

This post was inspired by the novel The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger. Young lawyer Sophie unwillingly takes her first divorce case with an entertaining and volatile client in this novel told mostly through letters and legal missives. Join From Left to Write on March 18 we discuss The Divorce Papers. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

The Fungus Among Us

It was not long after we had just finished a course of eye drops and oral antibiotics to address Sophie’s eye infection that I noticed the red spot, just above the line of her diaper. I chalked it up to chafing, and ignored it, assuming it would go away.

That was a mistake.

A week or two later the spot had grown to a large reddish circle with a ring around it. I had seen this circle before, on Kevin. Back when we lived in North Carolina.

Ring worm.

Ring worm is one of those childhood diseases that has a major ick-factor. First of all, you get it from playing in the dirt. I immediately flashed back to the two of us playing in the sandbox. It was just after a rainstorm, on an unseasonably warm day. The sand was wet and cool. Sophia had laid belly-down in it and thrust her arms deep into the pile, luxuriating in the sensation. I had turned away for a moment, and when I turned back her face was heavily freckled with grains, and sand was drooling from her mouth. “Oh Sophie! Don’t EAT it!” I told her. I pulled her from the box, rinsed her mouth out, wiped her down, and sternly reminded her not to eat the sand. But five minutes later I was pulling her from the box again, this time for good, her lips coated.

And then flashing back even further, about a year ago. Sophie was at another playground poking in the sandbox with a stick. Another mother said to me, “I never let my child play in sandboxes anymore. Cats. It’s like one big litter box to them.”

And yeah, maybe that’s true. But there are germs all around us. I’m not one to squirt anti-bacterial goo into Sophia’s hand every time she touches something. I think it’s important to be exposed to germs and build up one’s natural immunity. Okay, maybe not the germs in cat poo, but I’ve never actually SEEN cat poo in the sand box. I wouldn’t let her play in it if I did. I do have my limits.

So, hat in my hand, I called the pediatrician who prescribed an anti-fungal cream. Contrary to what the name might imply, ringworm is a fungus not a worm (which, in my opinion, is the only thing grosser than a fungus). We dubbed it the “tickle cream,” because every time I tried to apply it to the spot on Sophia’s stomach she wriggled and laughed hysterically. Better than screaming and crying, perhaps, but equally difficult to manage. For two weeks, Sophia and I suffered through the twice daily application, when I noticed another spot, this time south of the diaper line.

I felt awful. Like somehow I was failing Sophia. And a bit ashamed of her having contracted what I consider to be a dirty disease. And then, despite my diligence, another one appeared, this time on her chest. I called the advice nurse, and she told me to bring Sophia in. Apparently it can get worse…enter the hair follicles, create bald patches. And then you need a particularly invasive course of anti-fungal medication, with routine liver testing to make sure it’s not building up toxicity in the system. Sounds like just the kind of thing I want to give to my organically-fed baby. Then the pediatrician pointed out two other lesions that I hadn’t noticed. My heart sank. She prescribed Diflucan…an oral anti-yeast/anti-fungal. “Maybe a double hit will knock it out. This is so gentle, they give it to infants when they have thrush,” she assured me. But it was little comfort, knowing that in addition to the fact that the ringworm was continuing to spread, I was going to have to force yet another medication on Sophie.

I know I should be grateful that it’s just ringworm. She’s not chronically ill. She doesn’t need invasive procedures, and terrifying treatments. This WILL go away. But you never want to watch your child go through any amount of suffering. When I was sick, my mother used to quote my grandmother saying, “I wish I could take away your pain. That it was me, not you, going through this.”

I get that now.

A Pig Says Ah-choo!

I’m not a germ-a-phobe. In fact, after the NYTimes published an article citing research that eating stuff off the floor builds babies’ immune systems, I just recycled the pieces Sophia flung at the ground, blowing on them and sticking them back on her plate. Each time my husband cringed, I cited the Times—much to his annoyance. Still, we sailed through the first 17 months, relatively illness free.

That was, of course, until this week when Sophia got the diarrhea. Five straight days of it, during which, she barely ate or drank. On the fifth day, a Sunday, when Sophia, who ordinarily has no time for cuddling, hoisted herself on top of me and sagged over my body, lovingly limp, I called the triage nurse. Nonplussed, she instructed me to “call the doctor when it’s been two weeks.”

“TWO WEEKS?” Sophia, my baby, would desiccate and blow away by then.

“Well, is she producing at least three wet diapers a day?” She isn’t.

“Does she have a fever?” She doesn’t

“Start giving her Pedialyte. Or Gatorade. Two teaspoons every ten minutes.” This, for the baby who will eat or drink next to nothing.

“But she won’t eat or drink.”

“Then you’ve got to force feed her. And if she doesn’t wet her diaper in 12 hours, you’ve got to take her straight to the emergency room.”

I sent Kevin off to Rite Aide to purchase every flavor of Pedialyte and Gatorade he could find. He came home with five bottles of neon-colored liquid.

The Pedialyte was colorless, like water. I tried that one first. Sophia took one sip of it, gave a look of disgust and threw her sippy cup on the floor. I poured a glass of the iridescent orange Gatorade. She regarded the drink with suspicion. “Juice,” I ventured, and quoted from an alphabet book, “J is for juice, how thirsty are you?” She took a sip, scowled, and then took another. I turned, so my face wouldn’t betray my relief.

I called my mother for help. “It sounds like the swine flu,” she said.

“The what?” I hadn’t seen or heard the news for days.

“The swine flu. That bug that everyone’s sick with in Mexico. You were just on a plane right?”

“Out of Illinois.”

“I’m telling you. It’s the swine flu. It’s everywhere. She’s got the symptoms”

“Mom. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Nausea, diarrhea, fever….”

“I’m looking this up….”

“Fine. Look it up. Then get back to me.”

Kevin barely glanced up from his book on the history of obscure, ancient British kings. “She DOESN’T have the swine flu. Aside from the swine flu being a respiratory illness, there are no confirmed cases in the area.”

So I did what I always do in times of doubt. Internet research. Lots of internet research. Of course, he was right. But the more I read, the more I was able to visualize the swine flu stretching out across the country. Inhabiting. Infecting. And suddenly in our home, like a purple miasma rising up from the basement, engulfing our daughter, as I try, in vain, to get an appointment with the pediatrician.

Fear is virile. It spreads with the passage of misinformation, far more insidious than any germ.

The next morning, after another dry diaper, I called the doctor’s office again. “I’m freaking out.” I told them. “Bring her in,” they conceded.

Sophia, of course, did not have the swine flu. Nor did she have celiac disease, as the nurse practitioner suspected. Nor did she have a case of an over-reactive mother. She had a double ear infection, which can, I’m told, also lead to diarrhea.

After several days on amoxicillin, she was eating and drinking again. And not like she was before the infection. She was ravenous. Oh, she still flings bits and pieces on the floor (which, by the way, I’ve stopped recycling). But a fair portion of it winds up in her mouth.

Now hear this: I resolve to stop counting calories and bites. I will measure Sophia's health by how she looks and acts, not by the numbers on a scale. You are all my witnesses. I'm done. I will not live in fear.