The Saddest Day of the Year

On Wednesday afternoon, I got a call at school from our daycare. Michael had a 101 fever. This was sad enough in and of itself. But the REALLY sad part was that because he had a fever on Wednesday, he couldn’t come to school on Thursday. And Thursday, in case you are living under a rock, was Halloween.

Before I had kids, I had forgotten what a big deal Halloween is for little guys. Bean had been talking about the Halloween party and parade at his school for weeks. He picked out his perfect costume, and he was almost more excited to wear it to school than he was to go trick-or-treating. It broke my heart to tell him that he was going to have to stay home on the Big Day. But he was a trooper, which I think just goes to show how lousy he felt. He said okay, and then rolled over and went back to sleep. Poor dude.

On Thursday, my mom came down to stay with Bean for the day. She called me at school around 11:00 and said that Bean’s fever was still 101. I told her that Bean Man runs a really high fever normally when he’s sick, so 101 wasn’t too terrible for him. Just keep him cool, and I’d be home in a few hours. But when I got home, Bean looked AWFUL. Scary sick.

I hate fevers. They scare the bejeezus out of me anyway, but when he looked like he did, that scared me even more. We took his temperature under his arm and it was 103.3, and you’re supposed to add a degree to the under the arm temperature anyway, so that brought him up to 104. Wowza. That was high even for Bean.

I called his doctors office right away. I got my favorite nurse and she told me that we needed to bring the fever down slowly and safely, and then she gave me the best solution! She said not to just plop him in a cold bathtub (which is what I would have done and have done in the past). Instead, she said to take a bath towel and get it wet with luke warm water. Then, strip Bean down and wrap the wet towel around him. He needed to sit in the wet towel in the bathtub for a while. As the towel slowly cooled down, so would Bean’s temperature. She said it was a much safer way to bring down really high temperatures. And it totally worked! What great advice!

His fever came down a bit, but was still really high at dinner and as we were getting Gracie ready to go trick-or-treating. Bean was just so upset. He was crying and cuddling up in my lap, saying how much he wanted to go trick-or-treating.

“I’ve been waiting my whole life!” he cried.

Well, how am I supposed to say no to that?????

So, we put blankets in our wagon and told Bean he could ride along, but that he couldn’t get out of the wagon. The last thing we needed was to spread this virus through our neighborhood! He didn’t want to wear his costume, but he was pretty excited to be going along. I took Gracie up to each house while Chris stayed at the wagon on the sidewalk with Bean. Gracie did her “trick or treat” thing (which was adorable, by the way…) and then I carried Bean’s Spiderman pumpkin and explained I was collecting for a sick Spiderman out in the wagon.

Bean and Gracie were both a little skeptical about trick-or-treating. Bean was very nervous to let me deal with his candy. Apparently, that’s a very important responsibility and mom’s might botch it all up. And Gracie was not sure about going up to a stranger’s house. But when they both realized that we were getting candy everywhere we went, they were pumped! At one point, Gracie and I were standing at someone’s door waiting for them to come, and she dropped my hand and said, “I don’t need to hold your hand, Mom.”  She made me back up a little bit so that she was front and center.  What a ham!

(Gracie was Cinderella, and my mom made her costume! Isn’t it gorgeous?!?!?)

We came home and sorted through all our goodies, and then everyone had two pieces of candy and went to bed. Bean’s fever spiked back up really high around 9:00, but he made it through the night with a much lower temp and is holding steady this morning, too.

Being sick is the pits, but being sick on Halloween is absolutely heartbreaking! Bean was so pathetic and sad! I’m sure his doctor would not have approved of taking him trick-or-treating last night, but he wasn’t the one that had to look at that sweet, sad little face, either. Sometimes doing the wrong thing is absolutely the right thing to do!