Sick Little Man

Check it out. The Missus had a multi-day out-of-town obligation this week, meaning I had all kinds of grand designs about what I would do with the little bit of extra free time that would buy me. Tasks. Projects! Maybe a little extracurricular sleep…

Naturally, all of my plans relied upon The Boy being at preschool during the day. Naturally, the day before she left town, The Boy was sent home from preschool with a runny nose, low energy level and persistent, hacking cough.

And I can’t even say I’m surprised. For one, we could see he was getting sick a few days before preschool made it official. This town we live in, if it’s not hotter than the surface of the sun outside, it’s cold, grey and rainy. And kid-borne illnesses are spread around preschool like magician’s paper in a backdraft.

The other reason I wasn’t surprised, and we’re moving into a self-pity zone here (or as I call it, My Comfort Zone), where scheduled time off is concerned, my plans invariably go awry. It’s even worse when I’m the one who’s supposed to be ‘getting away’ for a few days. At least in the current scenario, every fucking thing goes wrong while I’m in the comfort of my own home.

Since The Missus was flying out Wednesday at noon, The Boy was struck down 24 hours before, gratefully just after I’d accomplished the majority of my week’s work. (My work-week starts on Friday—today, as it happens.) So I was able to run over to his school and grab him without having to juggle parenting a sick child with producing a newspaper under work conditions that could best be described as retarded (according to Webster: backward, disabled, handicapped).

Now there’s nothing I like more than spending quality parenting time with my son, but when he’s sick, which seems to be about 50% of the winter months at least, “quality parenting time” is an oxymoron. If you’ve ever been tasked with sole caregivership of a sick little kid, you know just what I mean. It’s like being given guardianship of a terrorist made of porcelain. And it is a 24/7 position for as long as it lasts.

Wednesday night was the worst. I was worried that he’d get a fever because he usually does when he gets sick and a couple days later, we end up at the doctor’s, getting antibiotics for his latest ear infection, for whatever reason the usual spot his colds curl up and decide to call home.

So I tip-toed in at 2 a.m. to touch his cheek, to check his temperature that way.

The good news is, he was cool as a cucumber. The bad news, the really bad news, is that I woke him up and he started coughing. The entire rest of the night and into the day. And his super-cool super-inhaler (which we picked up the last time he was this sick, about a month ago) can only be used twice a day and I’m not going to fuck around with risking putting too much steroids into The Boy.

We stayed up the rest of the night together, me trying everything short of dropping an anvil on his head to get him to go back to sleep, but his insistent cough made that impossible. He was one miserable little man. Until sunup, when his body rebooted—or his brain did, anyhow—and he was raring to go, coughing fits or not.

By then I was able to give him another blast of enhanced inhaler, which worked its wonders. His coughing decreased about 90%. Unfortunately by then, my body was screaming for sleep. Shrieking, howling, begging for sleep, which he was having none of.

Eventually, right after lunch, I was able to convince him that Daddy really needed a nap. He didn’t need one, he assured me, speaking over the dark saucers around his eyes. Yes, I agreed, he was tip-top, he was, but Daddy needed a nap. A lot, not a little.

And the cool part was, I was able to convince him to do me this solid. He would lay down in his bed and “try” to rest—even though it was, by his calculation, altogether unnecessary—and I would pass out disgracefully in mine. I talked with him instead of to or at him and by treating him like he was a partner in this decision, instead of leaning on my own parents’ reliable stand-by: because I told you to!, we came to an accommodation like men. No tears, no bribes, no tit for tat. Simply one guy taking a hit for the other guy because we loved each other and wanted the best for each other.

As parenting moments go, honestly, it was everything I ever dreamed about when I used to think about how I’d like to raise a kid if I ever had any. No threats, no clobbering and lots of actual calm, rational conversation.

All of which led to me getting a desperately-needed hour of surprise shut-eye (my body simply will not sleep for longer than 60 minutes during daytime hours, sun or so no sun. It’s really fucked up) and The Boy slept for three hours. He might have slept longer, but since part of our negotiations included me not putting him into a pull-up for his nap (after all, he was only doing me a favor, he had no intention of actually sleeping), I had to split the difference between him getting as much sleep as he could and hopefully not waking up swimming in his own urine.

I’m happy to say I nailed it. He got up, went to the bathroom, and the rest of the day unfolded like it was a brand-new day. I’ll tell you, after my single hour of shut-eye, I was a whole new Daddy. We even went Big-Wheeling at his suggestion. Ate lots of protein-packed food, took a nice long hot bath, watched “Planet Hulk” again—warning to parents, this cartoon is way too violent for your 4-year-old—played a little guitar, ate some more, watched “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” and then I lulled him into a sleepy state again by throwing on an episode of “Kung Fu.”

And this time, as soon as he went down, I did too, just in case. And just as well. It turned out he didn’t take last night’s inhaler all the way down into his lungs so he began his deep wracking coughs from the other room just as visions of sugarplums were beginning to dance in my head. Got him up out of bed and gave him another spritz, instructing him that he had to breathe it all way into his lungs (I tapped him on both sides of his chest). This time he got it right; I could see some of the spritz in his breath after he exhaled. Bogie in black & white never looked any cooler to me than he did in that moment. I could almost picture him wearing a raincoat and fedora, leaning against a streetlamp, waiting for a dame. Put him back to bed and he’s been sleeping soundly for almost ten hours now.

Technically, I could probably send him back to preschool today. Oh Lordy, would I love to have this morning to myself.

But the fact is, when he gets up, he’s still going to be less than 100% by quite a bit. I’m going to follow my initial inclination, formed when I picked up the phone on Tuesday to hear the preschool lady’s voice, to keep him home the rest of the week. I don’t want to send a just-recovering kid into that Petri dish of cold germs and flying snot. I’ve faked my way through a lot of important shit before this (“Thank you, you’ve been a lovely audience!”), but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be a phoning-it-in parent. In for a penny, in for a pound.

No getting around it, this whole week is toast.

And I hear him beginning to stir now. No time to proofread. Up this goes and I’m off…!