Fever, ’til you sizzle

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DS2 came down with another fever yesterday. We aren’t sure where it came from, but considering it’s only been a week and a half since his last low-grade fever, it’s worrisome.

He was acting strangely yesterday after we returned home from the playground. He was clingy, didn’t eat his lunch, and kept saying he wanted to sleep on mommy. There were no symptoms, until later in the evening when his allergies were acting up. He was rubbing his eyes and nose and sneezing. That’s when he started to feel warm, so we took his temperature…several times…and it turned out he was at about 101 degrees. We gave him some acetaminophen and a popsicle, and he fell asleep on the couch.

The problem with sleeping on the couch is that it holds heat. I sweat badly when I sleep on that couch, so when I found him sleeping there with a blanket over his body, I tore the blanket off and felt him. He felt warmer. DH said he put the blanket on him because he was shivering. It was an hour after he’d had the tylenol (meltaways – the ones that weren’t recalled), and his body temperature went up a degree because he was “over dressed”.

We woke the poor child as we attempted to cool him off. We stripped him down and applied washcloths with cold water on his body until he just couldn’t take it anymore and we could no longer subject him to the torture. His body temperature lowered a good 2 degrees, and he fell asleep in his bed with nothing but a pull-up and a bed sheet on him.

Since he had a mysterious fever not that long ago that only lasted about 12 hours, and it wasn’t that long before that that we all had that nasty stomach flu that gave us all fevers, I decided to write this one down on the calendar in case he gets another fever any time soon. I’m watching him closely, as he complained this morning that his ear hurt. However, he only mentioned it once, so I’m waiting to see where it goes. Other that the fever, he’s acting fine now. His appetite isn’t so great, but he’s laughing and playing and enjoying himself.

But if another fever creeps in or this one doesn’t go away in a couple of days, we’re going to have yet another trip to the doctor’s office. *sigh* And if he complains about his ears again, I guess it’ll be antibiotics for my poor little man. This poor kid can’t catch a break.