flu, part 2

damn. K came down with it yesterday.

it came on all of a sudden, in the morning when she woke up she was a bit grizzly, but I thought it was mainly because she woke with a bit of a fright. She had a runny nose and cough, which I thought was just the end of her cold. no fever (only 36.3 I think it was). So I took her to playgroup. I am the worst mother ever, I swear. At playgroup she was clingy, and runny nosey. I still thought it was nothing more than a cold. Then she got hot. She fell asleep in the car coming home, and when she woke up, she looked groggy. So we waited outside the docs until they opened at 3pm, when they checked her temp (39.3deg). Doc told me I was stupid for having taken her out today. Yes, that was true. I felt SOOOOO BAD. Not only did K have the flu, but there is now the possibility that we have infected all our friends at playgroup. Doctor made me feel even worse when she found out K hadn't had the flu shot. Yes, I am the worst mother. Anyway, we got some Tamiflu and those stickers you put on your chest to help you stop coughing, and another lot of cold medicine (in syrup form - our third lot of this since we got back from Oz! She now refuses to take it and I can't find any way to get it into her (I have tried all the things I can think of, and everything the chemist and doctor suggested!) so I stopped giving her the last lot. The chemist said it was not that important anyway. And I read on the internet that there is nothing you can take to fix a cold so I am not worried about giving this lot to her either.)

Last night she was still running a high fever, and very groggy. We managed to get two "serves" (?) of tamiflu into her - they gave it to me in powder form, and suggested I mix it with custard or ice cream to give her. That worked well with chocolate pudding for the first attempt when we got home from the doctors, but by nighttime, K wouldn't even take any liquids let alone food. In the end, we had to mix the tamiflu powder into a paste and use a syringe to squirt it down her throat. I have wasted 3 out of the 8 packets of tamiflu powder the doc prescribed over the last day and a half by mixing it one way(that worked last time) only for K not to take it at all the next time. So now we are doing the syringe squirt routine no matter what, but tonight when we did it that way, of course she was screaming blue murder at us, got all upset and threw the damn tamiflu up 1 second after we had spent 10 mins slowly syringing it down her throat. I hope *some* of it stayed in her, though.

But I am actually surprised at how genki she is today. Last night she woke up every hour during the night, and seemed really struggling , but this morning she woke up with a fever running just under 38degrees (not high enough to use the bum bullets) and spent the morning watching re-runs of "inai inai baa" and "okaasan to issho" before starting off a colour-in-a-thon and drawing fest where I had draw a pussy cat 50times over for her. (fwiw, K drew a banana). She had a big afternoon nap, nearly 4hours and then even ate a small amount of rice with salmon for dinner. She has been drinking fluids well today too. And her temperature has stayed below 38 degrees, actually hovering around 37degrees for most of the day. I hope this means that we are over the worst of it. We are still going to be housebound for the rest of the week, and probably into next week just in case.

Poor little K.

I do feel so bad for her having caught the flu, last night when she was so sick it was really heart-wrenching. I just wished that I could take her place or something. I guess I was a bit too blah-zay (how do you spell that word?) when J had it, and should have been more vigilant with things like wiping down things he touched, washing K's hands more often etc. And of course I should have gotten the flu shot for her. I will be doing that for sure next winter.

And more importantly I feel really bad about taking her out and putting others at risk of the flu too. I can only hope that none of the kids or mums from playgroup catch the flu from her.

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Just wanted to say thank you to tigermama and nay for the comments.

I hope that I didn't come across in my original post here as just writing it so that people would comment that I wasn't a bad mother - I really did feel that way though, seriously. I know it is not logic, but hey, I figure I am not the most grounded and logical thinking person anyway. I also got messages and a phone call back from some of the mothers at playgroup who said "these things happen and not to worry about it" which was nice of them. Also one mum rang to say that (fingers crossed) they and their kids seem to be ok for now, so that is good to hear.

Just writing this now, I think I have realised that the main thing I was feeling was a sense of hopelessness at K having the flu and the situation in general. I guess this is something that as a mother I am going to feel more of in the future too.....