Chicken Pox and the ER

On a more personal note, last week was crazy. It made me rethink my plans for having a fourth addition to our family. Last weekend I took my 5 year old to get his last vaccination shot, the MMR, so that he could enroll in first grade for next year. Now I was nervous about it because of all the hoopla in the news concerning side effects, autism and seizures. I got it done anyway. On Friday his temperature rose, and I took it in stride because the doctor told me to expect it. Tempra was poured down his poor throat at four hour intervals. Saturday morning I called his doctor and she told me to relax and just use Junifen instead of Tempra. Now, we’ve been going to this doctor exclusively for the past four years. I trusted her and did what she told me to. But his temperature would not come down. So naturally the next day I took him to see her and she said that he seemed fine and the 39.8 temperature was not a big deal if I kept him on pain relievers. She even had the audacity to laugh at me and called me paranoid (closest translation from Arabic). By Monday evening my husband and I got hysterical and we took him to the emergency room. The doctor took one look at him and said he has chicken pox. I was so relieved. Now I knew what was wrong, I could deal with it.

Then this weekend, I thought the storm was over. We all got in the car to enjoy our weekly lunch out. As we were driving along, my six year old daughter asked me: “Mommy what happens if someone gets a toy stuck up their nose?” I replied: “They die.” To deter her and her brother from contemplating it as a future act. Turns out that is was actually a past act and she started panicking and crying. She had the separable bottom part of a pen lodged in her nose. We hurried to the nearest emergency room and the doctor al hamdlAllah was able to remove it with something that looked like really thin forceps.

Add these two incidents and my worry that the other two unimmunized kids would get chicken pox from their brother plus a hectic week at work.  You’ll start to understand how crazy it can get for a working mother.