Diagnosis- October 2, 2012
This was me today. It was the kind of Tuesday where I answered work emails from my phone as the doctor at Urgent Care told me to “Get over yourself and go home. You’re not going to work today. You’re running a fever.” So I sucked down soup and Airborne with no makeup, glasses, and tissues always in tow. Between naps I watched episodes of “Arrested Development” on Netflix. Laughing at the shenanigans of Gob, Buster, and Tobias made me forget about the body aches and runny nose.
This affliction came to be thanks to my daughter. My poor girl had a double ear infection with a virus on top. She had a fever from Thursday through Sunday. I worry she had it before that and we didn’t notice it.
When my fever from the virus started I felt terrible! This had me wondering. Was she starting to feel bad before we noticed it? Could her tantrums be because she didn’t feel well and couldn’t tell us? We can see when she is lethargic. Like any kid, she cries when she bumps her head or smashes her finger, but what about when she’s starting to feel ill? She can tell me when she has a boo-boo, but it’s not like she can say, “Mama, I feel like I might be coming down with something,” or “Daddy, I think my lymph nodes are swollen and my throat hurts.”
I Googled “When can a child tell you they are sick,” but I didn’t get the answers I was looking for. How old will she be when she can say, “I feel sick”? The mothering instinct has served me well so far, but I’m not gonna lie. It would be really nice for her to tell me when something is wrong.
How did you get your child to tell you something is wrong? When were they able to do that? I figure if I get some advance warning of her sickness, I may be able to keep myself healthier too.
Spread it around:
I think Travis was about 2.5 when he started telling us things hurt before we already knew it. Although, he was 3.5 the last time he had the stomach bug and he wasn’t able to tell us in *quite* enough time. :/
Will wasn’t sick for his entire second year and half of his third year of life, so I’m not sure when he WOULD have told us. (That move from daycare to my dad’s saved a lot in co-pays). However, he’s gotten sick twice since he’s been in preschool (about 7 weeks). Neither time required a pediatrician’s visit, but he told us his mouth hurt one day. I thought it might be a canker sore or something and asked him to show me where and he pointed way back in his throat. I said, “Your throat hurts? Are you getting a cold?” Sure enough he was snotty by the end of the day. About two weeks later, he sneezed and said, “I’m coming down with a cold again.” I said, “Just because you sneeze doesn’t mean you have a cold.” He said, “No, my throat hurts and that means a cold is coming.” He had quite a cough for the next couple of weeks. So I’d say as soon as they become good talkers and understanders of cause and effect, they can tell you.
Nonetheless, I’m convinced that adults are bigger pansies about sickness than kids. Will had 6-7 ear infections when he was a baby and sometimes I didn’t find out about them until he had a check up. Meanwhile, I got an ear infection once in adulthood and the pain was so bad I had to get narcotics. My kids have also run around playing, eating, laughing, and totally fine only for me to touch them, realize they were warm, and find that they had 102 fevers.