Sick of Sick

Just when we thought things were starting to calm down towards a routine and normal, everything got turned upside down. For the past week all three kids have been fighting off some kind of nasty cold/flu virus which messed up everyone's sleep, kept Lily home from school for a week, and generally brought all of us to the brink of sanity. It started with Lily having a dry cough for a couple of days which evolved into a hacking cough with a low grade fever which lasted a week. Before we knew it the twins developed a cough too and within a day or two they were a miserable mess, coughing up a storm and crying day and night. No real fever for them, but for a few nights they were up every hour or two. And of course a sick Lily is a whiny Lily, and since we were being a bit permissive with her she was taking full advantage.

This all led to the first sick visit to the doctor for all three of them. Pretty amazing that Lily made it this long without a serious sickness, but pretty early for the twins to be fighting something like this. The doctor did a swab on one of the twins for a specific common flu virus and it came back positive. Which of course made us think if we were in the States this wouldn't have happened since we all would have had a flu shot. Also, Nicole and I have not gotten sick at all with this, which just makes me think it's a strain that we already had in years past and had a good level of immunity to. Anyway.

It really felt for a few days like we had gone into some kind of primitive survival mode, back into the cave trying to keep our kids safe from the world and its nasty viruses. This feeling was probably due to our collective lack of sleep which was at least as bad as the first couple of weeks with the twins at home. Especially when we noticed that Lily seemed to have developed some hearing impairment it really hit home that this was serious business yet there wasn't a heck of a lot we could do about it. She seems to have trouble hearing low, soft tones, and from talking to a few doctors it sounds like this is not unheard of but also not that common especially since she hasn't complained of any pain associated with it. And yes, it's real, she's not making it up. She has a toy computer on which she complained that a few of the buttons weren't working... the same buttons that make low, soft noises that we could hear very clearly but she couldn't until she turned up the volume and then exclaimed that they were working again. Our homeopathic doctor who we've lost confidence in recommended a nasal spray to help with this which doesn't seem to be having an effect, and we have an appointment with an ear doctor over the weekend if it doesn't seem back to normal by then.

But we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The twins are generally sleeping better now, a couple of recent nights they only had the single wake up we'd grown accustomed to. All three are still coughing to some degree, but Lily's fever has been gone for a couple of days and our fingers are crossed that her ears will return to normal soon. Through all of this I kept questioning when things were serious enough to go to the doctor, whether our doctor was a quack, whether Lily's fever might just be due to her 3-year molars coming in, whether we would have a deaf child, whether waiting was a horrible decision, and whether we would ever get a decent night's sleep again. The jury is still out on most of these questions, but at least we have enough sleep now to reasonably consider the answers.